Well, I count Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton among our Founding generation. Not long after Washington began his first term as President, Hamilton started pushing the idea of chartering a Bank of the United States. Jefferson argued that the plan was unconstitutional. The debate concerned in part the interpretation of the Constitution's "necessary and proper" clause.
Hamilton's argument can be found here.
Jefferson's argument can be found here.
If ever you are able to read and understand those two arguments, you will discover that members of our Founding generation found plenty of room for debate and disagreement about the interpretation to be given to our Constitution. Had you been there at the time, you might have been able to convince President Washington that one or the other of these two Founders was clearly correct and the other clearly incorrect. Maybe the immediacy, the simplicity and the clarity of your interpretation would have thoroughly amazed and impressed all three of them. Maybe Washington might have fired both Jefferson and Hamilton and let you serve as both Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury.
Or, maybe not.
In the end, Washington sided with Hamilton. Was Washington clearly right or clearly wrong?
Extra Credit - Is George Washington to blame for our having a federal Department of Education?
Hint for Extra Credit Question - Washington had slaves at Mt. Vernon and he never took away anybody's slaves.
The “necessary and proper clause” does NOT grant substantive enumerated powers. In the monetary arena, for example, the experience with the Continental gave rise to the Federal government’s power being limited to only the enumerated power of coining of money. Coining money requires a mint or contracting with a mint. That would be “necessary and proper”. Creating a Central Bank obviously is not “necessary or proper” with respect to carrying out the function of making coins. Hamilton, Marshall and others were engaged in trying to get by chicanery and stealth what had been denied them in the compromise that resulted in the Bill of Rights and Constitution. They were much more persistent and consistent than their opposition. I’ll give them that, but that seems to be true of statists generally, perhaps because capturing government and expanding it provides them with a considerable payoff.
Washington’s biographers will tell you that he had little grasp of the financial issues that were Hamilton’s forte. Washington was mainly what the historians call a “military” federalist. He wanted the Constitution because he believed, rightly IMHO, that a somewhat more powerful federal government would be able to defend the US better from foreign aggression. I also agree with Washington’s foreign policy advice in his Farewell Address. On the other issues, he largely listened to Hamilton, with whom he had been close. Hamilton got part of what he wanted in the Constitution, and then he, and others like him, got busy trying to get by other means what they didn’t get in the first place.
You need to disabuse yourself of the notion that the Constitution was personal to a small group of people and that it was theirs to change as their political objectives changed. Madison was quite clear that the actual founders were the ratifying conventions, which is the legal fact. The plain meaning of “Congress shall make no law...”, for example, can’t legitimately be changed by Washington, Adams, or anyone else deciding that the restriction was inconvenient. If that had been the Constitutional plan, it never would have been ratified, which would have been a shame.
I guess you really are on the same page as the progressive left; you just would like a somewhat different agenda.
Hey! The Lincolnolaters need your help on a Corwin Amendment thread ;-)