Dave Davies

We were talking about the Constitutional Convention.

This was the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia.

It's hot, it's humid.

And in the middle of the proceedings, there's a break and a five-member committee called the Committee of Detail actually drafts the text of the Constitution.

And Wilson was one of those five.

He was very influential here.

And one of the big issues they had to confront was how much power the federal government would have as opposed to the individual states.

Remember that

As the country was governed then, the states had enormous power.

The Congress had no power to tax.

And so all these centrifugal forces were sort of tearing the country apart.

So what perspective did Wilson bring to this question of how much power a central government should have and how did he wield it in this debate and in the drafting?

Another big, big issue that they had to resolve at the Constitutional Convention was the nature of the executive branch of the government.

And today we're used to the idea of a single chief executive, the president, chosen in a national election.

But this was not assumed at all, right?

I mean some people saw – maybe thought the executive branch should be a council controlled directly by congress.

Wilson felt that it's critical that you have a strong executive and that it be vested in a single person.

What were the objections and alternatives?

How did that debate go?

But once he agreed and the convention agreed that people would choose electors who would themselves choose the president, the question was how many electors does each state get, which is pretty critical, right?