The rejection of monarchical pomp and circumstance is one of the best things that makes America unique though. The President shouldn’t do that stuff either. Let athletes or coaches do the opening ceremony. Make the image of Independence Day the average Joe grilling in his backyard. We should be a country of ordinary people without trappings of royalty.
I dunno. I think you need someone to do it on a permanent, predictable basis. You need a head of state, in other words. But it should be a completely apolitical, disempowered office. For the life of me I don't understand why a few countries even have actual elections to choose their ceremonial presidents. Why let electoral politics in at all if the office is ceremonial?
I think *all* countries in the EU have elections to elect their Presidents. For example, here are the results of the first vote for Mattarella, who was referenced in the article:
Just as Prime Ministers are not directly elected (maybe there’s an exception to that somewhere in Europe), but are selected by the legislature, the same happens with Presidents, as far as I know.
Ireland directly elects their ceremonial President. Amazingly, their last few presidents have mostly been independents with interesting backgrounds:
Mary Robinson was a notable lawyer who brought a series of cases in favour of gender equality
Mary McAleese was also a lawyer, who had campaigned on abortion rights and legalising homosexuality, even while being a member of the most Catholic of Ireland's parties.
Michael D Higgins was a poet who was later a TD (elected member of the parliament) and briefly minister for culture.
Catherine Connolly was yet another lawyer, but notably /very/ left-wing and very pacifist (IIRC, she called for Ukraine to non-violently resist the Russian invasion).
I meant that every country elects its Presidents one way or another (either directly or indirectly) as opposed to having a President totally detached from politics, but yeah, I didn’t write it very clearly.
PS: Calling for Ukraine to non-violently resist is what the Putinists in my home country are also calling for! They just want peace, you see…
Oh, she's not a Putinist. She's just the sort of weird leftie who thinks that not having an army and being neutral means you don't get invaded. Proof: Ireland wasn't invaded in WWII.
(yes, this is utterly ludicrous. Fortunately, she's President of Ireland, which is a tiny and militarily irrelevant country and her role there has zero military significance)
Ah, yes, the Putinists in my home country also don’t openly support Putin. They just want the innocent Ukrainians to live in peace and not be forced to fight on behalf of NATO. They’re just doing it because they’re pacifists, of course!
That strategy was never tested by the barbarian hordes who stopped with Great Britain. That ended up saving civilization. Maybe she was on to something.
>I think *all* countries in the EU have elections to elect their Presidents<
Right. Portugal had an election a week or two ago. It puzzles me this system isn't questioned a bit more. If the goal is a truly ceremonial presidency, why not remove the office *completely* from politics? IIRC in the Portuguese election, the campaign between the two candidates got pretty...political and a bit vituperative. Which I think means the incoming president will obviously be viewed as a rather partisan figure, no matter what the constitution may stipulate. But I'm no expert on Portuguese politics, maybe that's wrong (I happened to catch a news story about the election on, I think, Reuters).
Of course, some (most?) "ceremonial" presidencies (just like plenty of monarchies) *do* retain some residual powers. That fact and the aforementioned intrusion of electoral politics makes me think: a lot of these offices aren't really so purely ceremonial. But IMHO they ought to be! Hence my preference for dispensing with elections...
(IIRC Israel has gone about as far as you can go to make the Presidency highly, purely ceremonial in nature.)
I think the idea is to give the person public legitimacy. It's not really true that these are purely ceremonial roles- the president in a parliamentary system is involved in creating & dissolving governments. Technically the parties that have successfully formed a coalition and will meet with him/her for permission to create a government. This is high-stakes stuff, just behind the scenes
I think that the problem is that you can’t get the politics out of politics! Just as the apolitical Supreme Court in the US might potentially have some partisan inclinations (that’s what my American friends tell me), apolitical positions in the EU aren’t apolitical either. The funny thing is that AFAIK the desire to directly elect the ceremonial President is supported by saying that this will make the position LESS political than giving that right to the political parties in the legislature. (Also good point about the fact that usually the President has some power on paper that just mostly refuses to use.) If you have a direct election for President, then the people can select their favorite actor or singer or football player. Elections from the legislature tend to not do that.
>I think that the problem is that you can’t get the politics out of politics!<
Not completely, that's true. I guess I'd say we can try to minimize the political element, though. Some institutional structures are better at that than others.
>Just as the apolitical Supreme Court<
A body with as much power as SCOTUS could never be remotely apolitical. That's just a fantasy. But it seems to me an office whose sole purpose is giving toasts at state banquets and presiding over important ceremonies is a very different animal.
>AFAIK the desire to directly elect the ceremonial President is supported by saying that this will make the position LESS political than giving that right to the political parties in the legislature.<
Sure. That makes sense. What I'm thinking of isn't a parliamentary process but something more automatic. Like, in the American context, imagine if we had a body called "The Presidential College." Federal judges could join upon reaching the age of 60. The most senior member of this College under 80 years old becomes Vice President when a vacancy arises (he/she must leave the judiciary), and the VP succeeds to the White House when the President leaves office. One year term. Non-interference in politics is part of the deal. Senate can remove a President by simple majority vote for any reason (ie, corruption scandal, infirmity, political activity). Or whatever. There are a million different versions of ideas like this.
> imagine if we had a body called "The Presidential College."
You should consider working in fantasy or science fiction. Institutional world-buliding as good as this doesn't grow on trees. It adds great depth and generates hooks for great plot points.
“A body with as much power as SCOTUS could never be remotely apolitical. That's just a fantasy. But it seems to me an office whose sole purpose is giving toasts at state banquets and presiding over important ceremonies is a very different animal.”
I agree with this, but I think that the problem is that even a totally powerless President still has a lot of prestige. The winning political parties want to reward some of their long-serving members, and that is an incentive for politicization. In a US context, even if the President had no real power, people would still want to be the person representing the country on its 250th birthday, for example.
I also think that part of what’s happening here is that people don’t think that much about the President in a ceremonial EU context, so there isn’t a strong incentive to spend time thinking about a less political process. There are usually more pressing problems to worry about.
"Elections" yes but not necessarily with the whole electorate--the Wikipedia article you link to, for example, explains that "[o]nly members of Italian Parliament and regional delegates are entitled to vote." The President of Germany is elected similarly.
Yes but the Bundestag is deliberately supposed to reflect the broad opinions of the German electorate via proportional representation. The Bundesvammerlung (the body that elects the president of Germany) is deliberately not broadly representative of the electorate, but of the institutions of state, to reduce his legitimacy to exercise power.
And "who should be chancellor" is a central issue in national elections even if the specific mechanism is indirect election (as it technically is for the US president as well). That's not true for the German president.
This doesn't really hold up historically. Maybe the founding fathers didn't want as much ceremony as kings, but they certainly believed in some pomp for the president (receptions, uniforms, 4th of July celebrations, etc.)
There's no reason to think any strain of American politics would have a problem with the president participating in the olympic ceremonies. So if that's what you want to argue for fine, but saying it's in the American tradition is misleading
Beat me to it. The avatar of a country should never be held by only one person, and it should never be held regularly, because all humans are flawed, and will always have disagreements with each other over many things.
The actual problem with state dinners is we hold them for heads of state and not heads of government. So King Charles, who is an unimportant person in world policy, receives one, but the British Prime Minister, one of the most powerful people in the world, does not.
Or we can be normal and have a ceremonial President and executive…um… I like Chancellor for a title. President continues to be elected by the Electoral College, but the electors *must* be elected by the lower house of the state legislature.
I wrote an EXTENSIVE Quora post back in the day about all this…
Basically, my conclusion was that the best way to resolve the design contradictions between the Senate, House, EC, and presidency, was to convert the EC into a coalition-building exercise within a multiparty environment created by RCV for Senate seats and STV for an enlargedHouse with a min-max of 3-5 seats per district — likewise, the EC would be semi-proportionalized along these same lines.
This gets you an EC that HAS to elect a President, but with usually no one party able to wield a pure majority.
The advantage here is that due to quirks of how the Constitution is written, it doesn’t really require any amendments to be passed. But admittedly, it would take a bit of getting-used to, and I never got around to figuring out a transitional solution.
This discussion is based on what are considered defined norms regardless of the defined political, governmental or ceremonial roles. All goes to hell in a hand basket when norms are ignored and character is missing leaving most system perceived as inadequate.
The dual role of the President is a problem, but it would be much less of a problem if we hadn’t let the presidency become so much more powerful than the other branches of government.
This is really the core issue. The Executive has way too much power and Congress today has very little interest in protecting its institutional role, so does nothing to rein it in.
But all of the other developed countries have very powerful executives too. The British & Canadian PM is arguably more powerful than the US President.
The real issue is allowing an unqualified loon to win the Presidency via primaries. I'd say I'm pro-strong executive otherwise, and anyways 'weak executive but strong Congress' isn't really how any developed country works
The PMs in those countries are elected by the parliament, and can be removed by a simple majority vote. This means you don’t have conflicts where one party controls the executive and the other controls the legislature. That may not be our current situation, but it might be starting in 2027.
It’s a different kind of power in a parliamentary system with different checks and restraints. Executives in parliamentary systems aren’t independently elected, nor do they have separate powers untouchable by the legislature. Parties are stronger and can replace who leads them. Parliamentary coalitions can form to bring down a government and replace a bad PM. Usually, a Prime Minister will have to keep a coalition together. Etc.
One thing Newt Gingrich got right was trying to swing the pendulum of power back to Congress. He certainly wielded more power from that position than anyone since. Controlling the Senate is fine if you just want to obstruct things, but I miss legislators who want to legislate.
I think the Founders considered having some kind of triumvirate presidency, but that never seems to work for long.
No, it’s the cowardly congresscritters who are all too happy let the President do their thing. Even when they’re out of power they can run against the current President.
The whole thing about the 250th becoming a celebration of the Donald is really bumming me out. Yes, I get that it shouldn't be that way. Yes, I am patriotic; I literally taught American history for years. Yes, I get that I should ignore the Donald and view this as a celebration of America.
But it doesn't feel that way to me. Maybe I'll feel differently when July rolls around.
I mean I live in New York; live in Nassau county but commute to Manhattan. My area definitely has its share of Trump fans and given its Long Island they are obnoxiously loud about it. But in general, blaring headlines in December 2024 notwithstanding which made it seem like every man in New York under 30 was a Trump fan, I live in a pretty left of center area. Point being I have a hard time believing the 250th celebrations here are going to much of Trump jerk off session like might be the case in places like Alabama or West Virginia.
It’ll also happen right smack in the middle of the World Cup which is amazing to think about. So the 250th will be happening with games going on literally that day. So the entire world’s eyes will be on the US that day.
And it’s basically the ultimate dream for Trump; to be the host of the world’s biggest tv show. I can’t see how he doesn’t try to make the entire thing all about him.
I actually hope I’m wrong about this but I think we underrate the possibility how much the World Cup is a real Trumpism coming to its ultimate conclusion moment.
I live in Philly, so we’re probably going to go hard on Ben Franklin and Independence Hall. Hopefully they stick with fireworks over the art museum, and Orange stays in DC.
I like to think about an alternate history book where Franklin is our first president, the capital of the northern states stays in Philly until a proper capitol district is built along the Susquehanna, and the Great Seal has a turkey on it.
Then again, Franklin complained about the “swarthy Germans” moving into Pennsylvania, so maybe not so great after all.
Lots of parliaments have shitty democratic outcomes and governance. The move towards a more imperial presidency has been bad for the U.S., but I don’t know if a parliamentary system would be any better in the U.S.
I strongly disagree. The US is going the way of Latin America banana republic presidencies because we're allowing a demagogue to build a direct connection with the voters and then advance that into almost unlimited political power. Our unique twist on it is that we use primaries to remove what should be the fundamental strength of political parties- picking their own nominees and boxing demagogues out. Just being frank- voters should not be allowed to pick the executive, it's too demagogic power in one place. And then, the President is too hard to remove once in office.
Parliaments are superior because they remove picking the head of the party from the voters, and then the executive can be removed at any time if they look wonky. It's a fundamentally superior political system. Parliaments are a social technology that works, it's an advancement in the way that tractors are superior at their job to horses
I hear you but I think what's really going on is downstream of technological and economic changes. The UK has had, what, 6 prime ministers in the last 10 years (and the next may well be Farage)? Germany which is probably closer to what a parliamentary system would look like in the US has been stuck in a state of paralysis and ineffectual leadership as the post war mainstream fights increasingly hard to contain far right political insurgency. All of these countries are using illiberal mechanisms to prevent even more illiberal leaders and parties from taking power.
This isn't to say that our system is beyond reproach or couldn't be improved but there are limits to what proceduralism can guarantee in any system. At a certain point the people have to believe in liberalism (or at least republicanism or whatever) and the system has to deliver the goods. It's also far from clear to me that a different system would contain Trump. Anyone who has MAGA level support would be a factor in politics and could potentially form a government.
Up until Trump, I would have agreed that the US system has clearly worked better even with poor presidents. But Trump is violating the law repeatedly and facing no consequences. He's not even trying to change the law, just ignoring what's there. And in the process, tearing down alliances, instituting tariffs, and numerous other things that are deeply unpopular *even within his own party!*
And he faces no consequences because there is only one real check on him and it requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate.
I think better or worse is something one could argue endlessly. I wouldn't necessarily go that far and didn't intend to in my last comment. What I'm trying to say is that no democratic system prevents what is happening. The most important opportunity to check Trump was November 4, 2024, and the American people chose not to. Failing impeachment and conviction, the next most important check is the 22nd Amendment.
But if 77 or 78 million people are going to vote for the guy I don't know what would keep him from taking power. Political parties that poll worse form governments in parliamentary systems and whether and to what degree they're held accountable for any violations of the law is as subject to the vaguaries of politics and culture as what's going on with this. Corrupt crazies survive votes of no confidence for nakedly partisan reasons. At a certain point the only solution is for parties and people that behave better to go out and win elections. There is no weird trick or constitutional catch all.
Right but this is kind of nihilism to make the two systems of governance appear to be equally decent. Yes, parliaments are imperfect and can collapse, they're not bulletproof. They're still an improvement over a presidential system. There's a wealth of political science research that parliamentary countries do better on everything from economic growth to personal freedoms and every other metric under the sun. Yes, this even compares poor countries with parliaments to poor countries with a president.
A parliament is a big step forward in social technology even if it's not perfect
Someone would have to break down how these studies control for 'Madisonian system is in Latin America' versus 'parliamentary system is in Europe.' I'm not sure there's enough data and boy would someone have to work hard to convince me they're comparing apples to apples. The personal freedom thing kind of just makes me laugh, given that in all of what are regarded as our peer democracies people can and are prosecuted for shit posting on the internet. No free speech, no exclusionary rule under the 4th Amendment, kitchen knives treated as weapons, near elimination of jury trials but it's us who aren't free.
Anyway it isn't like presidential systems can't work. France has one and ours has stood for arguably longer than any parliamentary system in the old world, save maybe the UK, depending on when you clock the complete neutering of the monarchy. I also don't think it's nihilism to note that the vast majority of the push on this subject is entirely based on partisan sour grapes and a backwards looking outcome based analysis of the process- or 'I didn't win but it is the system, and not me, that failed.'
I think the idea is in a parliamentary system, you wouldn't have 78 million people voting for somebody like Trump. You'd have 20 or 30 million people who identify with the far right. There were plenty of trump-skeptical people that just didn't want to vote for Harris, and in a parliamentary system they'd get peeled away from the extremists, and then you get a coalition government which is ideally more moderate.
As I understand it the way Latin America has (sort of) curbed the power of their presidents in the last 40 years is just much more frequent impeachments. Their legislatures have gotten much stronger, and much more trigger-happy with impeaching. But I think the barrier to do so is generally lower than the US- typically 60% or even a bit less
I mean, or Fanny Willis could have not thrown important work to her friend with benefits like the whole F-ing nation wasn't watching.
Which don't get me wrong, I'm very, very for Congress re-asserting itself. I'm just saying the idea that checking Trump takes re-writing our constitution is not true. This could be stopped we as a polity have chosen not to and chosen leaders who have chosen not to.
What could congress do right now to stop Trump from having ICE to continue to abuse people, attack Venezuela & Iran, pull back from our international alliances, charge tariffs to our allies, send justice department prosecutors after his enemies?
They can impeach him or pass laws. Both would require a 2/3 majority to achieve over his objections. That threshold is too high.
I think 55% is a bit too extreme (Obama would have been impeached twice, in either 2010 or 2014), but I could see 57.5% or so. The President would have to keep all of his own party on his side, assuming that the opposition is united against him.
Would probably increase midterm voter turnout, because presumably the President's supporters would be more incentivized to show up too
And the thing is that our system worked quite well for a long time and has resulted in largely stable governance. That has broken down, but I think it’s more realistic to try to get back to what worked before instead dream about a parliamentary system.
Yea I think a lot of the pining comes from an at best unproven faith that your average back bencher MP has a lot more spine than your average back bencher House Representative and that a person or movement capable of capturing 25-30% of the voters can just be cut off and contained through constitutional and/or procedural channels. That's not possible in any democratic form of government.
Culture is part of it, but I think the move to primaries and various other things, like campaign finance, that have weakened our two parties to the point that they are merely brands, has been the big structural change. Someone like Trump would never have been able to take over the Republican brand and completely remake its politics, for instance.
The move to primaries was because people wanted the democratic process to extend to candidate selection, and we have since seen that the folks in those smoke filled rooms of yesteryear had more sense than primary voters.
This can be fixed within the parties themselves, and I think they may find it to their benefit to do so. I doubt the Democratic Party wants some variation on Trump to capture their party; it could have been him, he went R because the field was weak.
The US and the world have gone through intense periods of cultural change. Half the world disappeared under communism for decades, another part tried to invade and murder their neighbors. We could have gone the same way. The US responded with a powerful program of centralized economic management and came through that with its institutions intact.
Our system in fact led to a civil war less than 75 years after it was set up. It achieved a point of stasis afterwards in part from fear of another civil war and in part because all the political will of the South was premised on maintaining Jim Crow, which created a lot of ideological heterogeneity within the parties. This is to say that the stability of the U.S. system, such that it existed, was based on contingencies rather than as a result of its structure.
It's not an argument in favor of parliamentary systems (though there are plenty of those) but rather a negation of the idea that "our system worked quite well for a long time."
We need to understand what we mean by "worked quite well" and what we mean by saying it's "broken down." The last nine years help demonstrate that the structure of the Federal Govt encourages growth in Presidential/Executive power because Congress and the courts have only limited checks on it. (Arthur Schlesinger argued that the tendency is almost as old as the office in "The Imperial Presidency.")
The system also seems to encourage Congressional inaction/passivity and Executive action/initiative. Two possible benefits of a parliamentary system are to make the legislature politically accountable for implementing the laws/policies it adopts, and to avoid paralysis when different parties lead the Executive and Congress.
I think the absolute best case scenario is it pretty close to the status quo. Our hypothetical imperial prime minister would be no less empowered and we'd be in a constant state of unpredictable leadership flux. Even if we became multi-party due to the different structure we could still end up in a state of near paralysis like many European parliaments.
I’ll take a badly-designed law passed by a legislature over an illegal tariff regime any day of the week. Legislative processes don’t guarantee perfection, but they at least offer the hope of correcting bad outcomes.
My overall point is that politics can fail regardless of how we organize democratic institutions. The reason things are failing is because our legislature has abdicated power because they want to abdicate responsibility for what happens. Everything is outsourced to the executive branch.
I would argue that our institutions should reflect our democratic failures. Sure, we might democratically decide to fire every red-haired person into the heart of the sun, or build a 500-foot wall between the US and its largest trading partner. But the systems that do so should be openly reflective of those bad choices, not obfuscatory. Systems that obscure those choices ensure we get all of the bad “truly democratic” decisions, plus a pile of bad intermediate decisions that nobody really wants. There are degrees of badness.
I'm with you. Nothing is perfect. I liked Fareed Zakaria's point that parliamentary systems pull the coalition forming into the election before the government is seated vs. our system when coalition building (or compromise) happens after the election. I mean ... how many example do we need to cite of coalitions breaking down requiring new elections to know it's far from perfect.
I think our problem arose out of the early partisanization of the Presidency. It seems tht the original idea was more of a "city manager" type relation carrying out Congress's policies. And does a PM do that any more than the President. Is the conflation of the head of state head of government really a problem? It is not more that Congress cannot legislate and the Presidents expands power to fill the vaacum?
Parliamentary systems ALSO lack the filibuster jamming them up, AND tend to have multiparty systems that provide multiple degrees of freedom for coalition formation.
IMO it’s not exactly that the presidency is broken; Congress was always broken FIRST.
The individual members do still abdicate their responsibilities to the government. But this means that legislation is passed unscrutinised, rather than not being passed at all. This means that governments - able to pass whatever laws they like - are inclined to confine themselves within their legal powers.
>> This means that governments - able to pass whatever laws they like - are inclined to confine themselves within their legal powers
That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
1. It’s not that legislation is being passed COMPLETELY unscrutinized, but that it’s being written by specific actors — usually either one with power or one with domain expertise, and/or their staff actually doing the writing — and then getting passed either through Secret Congress or overt partisan politics.
2. This doesn’t “incline [them] to confine” themselves, it does quite the opposite — the drafter knows they can sneak in some amount of hidden loopholes for themselves with few others being the wiser, or worse, being IN on it.
I think you’re confused about which country I was writing about. Parliamentary governments (unlike presidential ones) can pass whatever laws they want because they have a majority in their pocket.
Parliamentary governments are able to pass more or less whatever legislation they like, unlike presidential governments. As a result, when exercising powers, they tend to follow the law - because if they don’t like it, they can just change it.
If they lose in court, they’ll just announce that they’ll change the law to overturn the verdict.
Sure. Thee is not exceeding of legistlative authority. But cearel, the original idea of the Presidency was not as a rule makers. That’s why the Bill of Rights says ”Congress shall pass no law …”
You can see that in the original constitutional scheme where the guy who lost the election for president (but came in second) got to be the vice president. Those guys were surprisingly naive about certain things and we're still dealing with the legacy of that. They fixed some things but only in an ad hoc way.
They actually figured a president would be less partisan than a PM since, in their theory, the branches would compete whereas a PM is just the tool of the majority coalition in parliament (which is ground zero for faction politics). Didn’t work out that way of course.
If that was the original idea, they wouldn't have made George Washington the first president. He was not a guy devoted to the idea of just carrying out Congress's policies.
I think in context of a small republic only tenuously free of the former colonial power, surrounded by hostile native tribes and other still formidable enough European empires it makes a kind of sense to centralize defense and diplomacy in a coequal branch of government like the constitution does. The sense only starts breaking down in the mid 20th century then becomes a real problem with the combination of total Congressional dereliction of duty both via the administrative state and for reasons of partisan gamesmanship, plus a modern mass media environment where a single person can set an agenda in a way a larger deliberative body struggles to.
I don't agree and would say that compared to contemporaneous threats (which did not include Morocco, Sweden, Brazil, or Ethiopia) it was small and relatively disparate. Remember, no one in 1789 knew what would happen in Europe over the next couple of decades that ultimately knocked the French and Spanish out of the game as New World powers (plus the British were very much still around, particularly on the high seas) and there was a persistent fear of consolidation among native tribes into something more threatening, which did eventually materialize. I'm not saying you couldn't have made a case for something different but at minimum the War of 1812 and events that precipitated it make the Article 2 structure not crazy in light of the world that existed and came to be in the decades immediately after.
I'd be more convinced if we could point to parliamentary democracies being better run. In theory there are no limits on the British Parliament other than the King. If they want to build more housing and solve their biggest problem they easily could and with no judicial review. They just...don't.
in theory you're right but in practice it seems - not so much.
Yes, I feel like American fans of parliamentary government (including our host) really need to grapple more with the sheer level of dysfunction that has developed in the British parliamentary system in recent decades.
The US is the most politically unstable developed country man! I don't love everything about the British system, but they're not backsliding into Peronism. There are only 3 developed countries with a President (US/South Korea/Taiwan), and SK just had a coup attempt last year. Seems notable that the only semi-presidential developed country in France is also in terrible shape.
Parliaments clearly have a better track record than presidencies among rich countries in the 21st century, and it isn't close
My comment, which was replying to BZC's reply about the inability of the British government to promote building more housing, was in reference to the fact that, until about 30 seconds ago, the overwhelmingly most common critique of the U.S. presidential system was that it features many veto points preventing Good Things™ from being achieved, which parliamentary systems were supposed to be much better at delivering because, by definition, the policy goals of the legislature and executive were overwhelmingly aligned.
The main Good Thing that rich-country parliamentary systems do is not collapse into autocracy. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs for me as a citizen, I prioritize 'not backsliding into an authoritarian regime' over like 'zoning reform'. The US is descending into Peronism specifically because a charismatic demagogue was able to make a direct connection with the voters, who don't care that much about 'threatening to arrest your opponents as a campaign platform' if they think he's good for the economy.
I am specifically making the pro-parliamentary argument because I think it's more stable and much less prone to democratic backsliding. 'Getting things done' is the next rung down in Maslow's hierarchy, but I'm still going to prioritize not doing this [gesticulates at everything] over like zoning laws
Which developed parliamentary country is sliding into Peronism today, or had something similar to January 6th? Seems notable to me that the only 1/6 equivalent would be South Korea's coup attempt last year, and they're...... a presidential system
Arguably, we were fortunate that the 200th anniversary was presided over by president who nobody had voted for, nobody had voted against, and was not particularly well-liked by his own party.
Matt writes about the ceremonial role of the president, but... who cares? Does anyone really think that's the core of the issue?
The merit of presidentialism is in the separation of powers. We distinguish the executive power from the legislative power in ways parliamentary systems typically don't. That's the core of the issue.
If Matt wants to argue about the merits, he should do that, instead of... whatever this was.
I "Liked" your reply because I agree with you overall, but Matt's hardly unique in this. There's a certain segment of "poli sci nerds" who really do find themselves deeply troubled about the lack of an American national figurehead. (My main political science professor in college was one of those individuals and that was back in the 1990s. If he's still alive, I have to imagine he's been crawling the walls for the past decade.)
What is the point of writing articles like this, about how our presidentialism isn't a good system, that never seem to be backed up or followed through with support for some of the more logical, achievable measure to reduce presidential power and make the President a less important figure, relative to a Congress and and State governments?
As someone who had this happen to me a few days ago, I want to go on the record and say it's really shitty and dismissive for semi-representatives of Slow Boring to go into the comments telling people "relax" over completely reasonable, non-hysterical statements.
The community discussion is one of the big value adds here, and if you or Milan or whomever go around shitting on any ideas you don't like or that you think challenge Matt in an unfair way, I'm going to start having second thoughts about whether this is the best use of my $80.
I’ve been moderating for a while now and I have always tried to foster an environment that allows for healthy disagreement with the daily post. I found this comment to be pretty silly because, as this post notes, it’s a holiday and slow boring either reruns other posts or publishes shorter more relaxed content on those days.
I’m not saying I’m going to ban this person for this silly comment. I’m just pushing back because I don’t think it disagrees with the article in a helpful way. Obviously, it would be very hard to shift away from our current presidential system!
Sorry if I came off as unnecessarily grumpy in my comment, I had just come back from a really tiring back packing trip in kota kinabalu and my hotel room was gross
I disagree with Matt pretty often in the comments, and sometimes with Ben directly, but the moderators have never been an issue. I think the actual comment was the problem, not the disagreement.
Yeah, I liked today's post and upvoted Oliver's answer, but "relax" is a truly shitty way to shut down a sincere question, especially one that elicited interesting substantive answers.
It's essentially "don't worry your pretty little head about it", but for everyone.
It is good epistemics to separate diagnosis and solutions, because you risk adjusting the diagnosis to support solutions you support, especially if there is a chance of an unsolvable problem.
I understand that Matt is to a large extent a political operator who uses his newsletter to influence the world, but the notion that all political writing must militate for a specific change seems very unusual and not at all how the genre has been seen in the past.
I've been asking for a post on what Democrats agenda should be to rein in Presidential power that Trump's abuses have so exposed. Matt will say end the filibuster but what else?
What Matt's addressing here is the fact that a future Republican Congress can easily undo restrictions on Republican Presidents and pass new restrictions on Democratic Presidents. We've seen examples of this behavior in Wisconsin and North Carolina. In the US system, there's no long-term change to Presidential power without Constitutional change.
A Republican trifecta can undo restrictions on a Republican President, but I'm not sure easily is correct. Affirmative legislative action is always more difficult than passive acceptance of Presidential action (see how little Trump is even trying to legislate, and there are just many more periods when there is not a trifecta than when there is. Passing new restrictions strictly on a Democratic President would be even harder, it would require veto proof majorities in both houses, and nearly pure unanimity. The latter condition is even more rare than a trifecta, and the former even more difficult a process of vote whipping.
There are Constitutional prerogatives that can't be legislated away. But there is low hanging fruit. I would start with removing every instance that purports to allow a President to act emergently, and follow that with strict legislation about things like recission, how and when money can be moved around withing programs, etc.
I would agree with you in cases of standalone restrictive legislation (or repeal of restrictive legislation). The legislative strategy would be to combine the action with an appropriations bill, continuing resolution, or other bill that can be passed under a rules waiver not requiring a supermajority. (Bringing the parliamentarians along is always a challenge in those cases.) Congress would tie it to a "must-pass" bill and apply the corresponding rules.
I don't see anything related to appropriations as low-hanging fruit because the appropriations process is where all the real power lies in Congress, and where the Executive experiences many of the relatively few Congressional checks on its power.
I think the low-hanging fruit is for Congress to pass legislation to clarify the powers of the President related to "independent" agencies and the discretion of agency leaders.
Sure, but we're a little beyond "identifying the problem" as being a novel or useful advancement of the public discourse -- it's simply saying the obvious, in a year when unilateral presidential power has upended global trade, slapped tarrifs on friendly neighbor for running a TV commercial critical of the president, sent armed forces into a city to disturb the peace, totally rewritten legislation on car emissions standards, etc, etc, etc.
There's a major analytical difference between "presidentialism is bad" and "the president should have less power." Both might be true but the point is that you should have a prime minister to do the executive power things and a president to take on the ceremonial role. The conflation of roles isn't a problem you can solve by strengthening Congress at the president's expense, and there are realistic limits on how far you can go with that.
If it hasn't been done already that would be a good topic for some posts--the nuts and bolts of how to actually overhaul our democratic system (or an overhauled version of parliament). Things like one six-year term, mandatory voting (on Saturdays!), and to somehow connect this wonderful tool called the Internet to get more participation from the citizens (instead of being mercilessly hounded for donations,lol).
The problems with "reducing Presidential power" are (1) Presidents have power to expand their powers as heads of a coequal branch, and (2) Congress can lift past restraints when the majority party wins the Presidency.
In a parliamentary system, the legislature runs the Government, not the head of state.
'The legislature' does not run the government in the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan etc. The Prime Minister does, and the PM is quite a bit more powerful than any US President- they tell their party in parliament how they're going to vote on legislation, and it mostly just gets done. I'm unaware of any country, developed or otherwise, that allows Congress to just run things.
Not to pick on you but there's a lot of confusion here in the comments between people who want a parliamentary system but also somehow a weaker executive. Parliaments have a stronger and less constrained executive, not the other way around
I don't feel picked on, maybe in part because your comment seems to miss the key point. In a parliamentary system, the PM is a member of the legislature and is elected by the legislature. This means the PM is almost always the leader of the party holding (directly or in coalition) the majority of parliamentary seats.
The point is not to have a "weaker" executive, but to have a unitary accountable government responsible for making and implementing legislation and policy. In a parliamentary system there is no separation between the legislative and executive functions, so there is no conflict between "coequal" branches of government: the PM is a member of the legislature and can be removed by a simple majority of the legislature at any time. The PM, unlike the Chief Executive in a Presidential system, has no independent constitutional power. As the presumed leader of the party in power, the PM does indeed have great power to drive legislation and policy.
I think we're kind of in agreement, but I just want to note- the British/Canadian/Australian/Japanese PMs dominate their legislature. Frankly, they give orders about what legislation is to be passed. It's a relationship utterly unlike the US system, where individual legislators can choose to defy their party on any vote they want. And removing your PM generally triggers early elections, which no one is eager to do. When these PMs are removed it's generally by a senior committee of their own party.
The PM can be removed by a simple majority, but what I think you're missing is that they can remove an individual legislator from the party far easier. Trudeau ejected 2 members of his own party for defying him during a scandal, Starmer is blocking a rival from running for office in his district, etc. Again it's a hierarchical relationship where the Prime Minister tells the legislature what's going to be passed
There are a few things going on here that are worth distinguishing:
- the relationship between the government and the parliamentary majority is always going to be tighter in a parliamentary system, given the dynamic of confidence
- US political parties are especially decentralized and non-hierarchical, with even the ability to run on a party label being controlled by a state-run mass election among party members registered by the state (and states with open primaries not even that)
- all of the examples you list are of parliamentary systems that always or near-always have single-party governments
I agree there are risks in a parliamentary system. I think your point about party discipline is a good one, and I'd certainly agree the PM is at the top of a hierarchy. Individual legislators can always defy leadership but must accept consequences, just as in the US system. Losing all committee assignments or getting the wrong ones, for example, is deadly in the US Congress.
In many cases, the PM risks the majority/coalition if the expelled members - expelled from the party but not the parliament - join with enough opposition members. The PM's ability to dictate legislation has practical limits.
For example, Keir Starmer won't survive in office by removing Labour MPs who oppose him from the party.
One of many odd things about the US Constitution is that it's not consistent at all about the separation of powers. The president rules the executive branch, but also has huge sway (even control) over legislation through the presidential veto. Thus, in addition to the president's tremendous influence over his own party in Congress, the president has an official, constitutional power over legislation as well.
It seems that the Framers thought that the president would only veto legislation for Constitutional reasons, but since Jackson, presidents have unabashedly vetoed bills simply because they didn't agree with the intention.
The president's power over legislation is not matched by any equivalent Congressional power over the executive. Congress's power over the executive is limited. It can try to defund things, but it can't fire anyone (impeachment is unworkable), nor can it hire anyone. If the president isn't "executing" a law, there's de facto nothing Congress can do other than criticize.
It's an interesting thought experiment to consider how the US would have developed if the president didn't have the veto, and/or Congress did have more power over the executive.
The thing that stuck with me most from reading some of the Federalist is that its authors assumed the legislature would naturally be the most powerful branch and the executive would be the weakest. Impeachment IS the legislature's check on the executive! It's not inherently unworkable! But it's harder to trigger than the veto as a way to increase the executive's power a bit relative to the legislature's.
On paper, impeachment is only as difficult as overriding a veto, and that has actually happened many times. In practice, people are much more afraid of FIRING the head of their party than of disagreeing with them on some legislation. But it might have turned out differently if we'd had a successful impeachment earlyish in the country's life.
I think it's worth pointing out that a big part of the problem has been Congressional cowardice on exercising its powers. It was pretty widely expected, as I understand it, by the "Framers" that Congress would, in fact, be pretty energetic about pursuing impeachment, defunding things, etc.
I don't know if "Congressional cowardice" is really the right framing for that since the Founders themselves were the ones who did nothing once they were in Congress.
The Founders may have expected something but they did absolutely nothing 8 years later when Adams was a disastrous President (from the perspective of Presidential-Congressional power) including starting a war without Congressional approval and putting people who criticised him in prison.
Every single Founding Father was still alive and active in politics at the time.
Madison and Jefferson's reaction to Adams wasn't to try for impeachment or defunding but to instead argue that states could nullify laws they didn't like and should consider secession.
So I'm somewhat dubious, whatever they may have claimed, that they actually believed strong Congressional action against an Imperial presidency was ever a realistic option.
Greetings from Svalbard. If you think Trump is going to put you in a concentration camp, you should know your rights under the Svalbard Treaty of 1920. As a citizen of a signatory, you have the right to live and work in Svalbard without a visa, though the Norwegian government can expel you if you cannot support yourself. There are jobs in hospitality and knowledge workers can work remotely so it really is practical. You could also bounce back and fourth between Svalbard and countries like Canada that give 180 day visa free access. Remote work from Canada could be practical if technically illegal, irl work generally would be impossible.
We went snowmobiling today. Negative 17 degrees celsius, significantly warmer than Lapland but the wind makes it feel colder. Any fresh you don’t cover gets frost bitten within 30 minutes, but that’s only 4 months a year.
But it is an interesting bullshit test. If you really think Trump is a safety threat, you would deal with the polar winters.
As someone who isn’t eager to leave the US but is also skeptical that anyone else would have any of us if shit really hit the fan here, this is appreciated.
Need to be a first mover, though.
And to be clear, I don’t think Trump is a danger to me personally, but depending what happens I could see serious disorder.
I lived in a democracy and I plan to die in one or fighting for one.
I would not emigrate because my coalition lost an election or because our president were an asshole.
But if the midterms are not free and fair and remedial efforts fail, In out. Better to try to start over at 49 (we’ve got plenty of cushion but would absolutely have to downsize) than to pass under the yoke.
The fact that Lincoln and Washington don’t have their own days off is wild to me to this day. Just sort of the umpteenth example of the downstream consequences of the South being a one party authoritarian dictatorship for so long given what power that gave to “Dixiecrats” in Congress*.
Also, I’ve said a number of times I’m absolutely on board with the idea there should be at least one Federal holiday every month. The fact there is no Federal holidays from Presidents’ Day to Memorial Day is nuts to me (part of why my wife has convinced me that March not February is actually the worst month given March is usually still pretty cold and “wintery” and we don’t really see consistently warmer weather until mid April. At least where I live). Like I feel like there are plenty of candidates for holidays. Also, if we’re brainstorming easy “Populist” ways for Dems to appeal to swing or rural voters that they are no longer the party that caters to “They/Them” first then I’d say coming out for making the day after Easter a Federal holiday seems an easy win for me.
* The thing that gives me hope and worry about this Trumpy moment is that we already have experienced having an authoritarian dictatorship in our borders. I’m going to be the upteenth person to point out that the U.S. was not a true free and fair democracy until 1965. So my “hope” is that this country was actually able to survive and become a true democracy after 100 years of an authoritarian terror campaign. My “worry” is the “Stephen Miller element” (as I call it) clearly have a playbook in mind they want to recapture. I actually don’t think Milller (and Musk who’s part of this “element”) represents anywhere close to a majority of the America public but he does represent a more significant minority than too many people want to admit (and based on polling a disturbingly high percentage of Republicans). So yeah my worry is we clearly as a country came to accept a world of actual authoritarianism in a large part of our country as just sort of the way things were in our past.
"The fact that Lincoln and Washington don’t have their own days off is wild to me to this day."
I guess if you made something other than their birthdays the days of celebration? Because, while I'm very willing to believe that the "Dixiecrats" had something to do with the consolidated holiday, their birthdays also were only 10 days a part (Lincoln on February 12 and Washington on February 22), which to me makes combining them into a single holiday seem pretty obvious, especially with the earlier one coming just six weeks or so after New Year's Day (the consolidation having happened before Martin Luther King Day existing).
I have to say while I am no fan of (and did not ever vote for) Trump, I would actively hurl myself off of my balcony before I sat through a 250th anniversary celebration Mc'd by Kamala Harris.
"Too late, too late, too bad, too bad," the poor liberal cried as the goon from the newly founded Beliefs Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security grabbed his collar and flung him out of the open helicopter door over the Gulf of America. "Parliamentary system, please," he moaned, unheard, as he plunged towards the cold, choppy waters . . . .
The rejection of monarchical pomp and circumstance is one of the best things that makes America unique though. The President shouldn’t do that stuff either. Let athletes or coaches do the opening ceremony. Make the image of Independence Day the average Joe grilling in his backyard. We should be a country of ordinary people without trappings of royalty.
I dunno. I think you need someone to do it on a permanent, predictable basis. You need a head of state, in other words. But it should be a completely apolitical, disempowered office. For the life of me I don't understand why a few countries even have actual elections to choose their ceremonial presidents. Why let electoral politics in at all if the office is ceremonial?
It's symbolism for a symbolic role. The president is the head of state for a democratic republic so is chosen democratically.
I think *all* countries in the EU have elections to elect their Presidents. For example, here are the results of the first vote for Mattarella, who was referenced in the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Mattarella#Presidency_(2015%E2%80%93present)
Just as Prime Ministers are not directly elected (maybe there’s an exception to that somewhere in Europe), but are selected by the legislature, the same happens with Presidents, as far as I know.
Ireland directly elects their ceremonial President. Amazingly, their last few presidents have mostly been independents with interesting backgrounds:
Mary Robinson was a notable lawyer who brought a series of cases in favour of gender equality
Mary McAleese was also a lawyer, who had campaigned on abortion rights and legalising homosexuality, even while being a member of the most Catholic of Ireland's parties.
Michael D Higgins was a poet who was later a TD (elected member of the parliament) and briefly minister for culture.
Catherine Connolly was yet another lawyer, but notably /very/ left-wing and very pacifist (IIRC, she called for Ukraine to non-violently resist the Russian invasion).
I meant that every country elects its Presidents one way or another (either directly or indirectly) as opposed to having a President totally detached from politics, but yeah, I didn’t write it very clearly.
PS: Calling for Ukraine to non-violently resist is what the Putinists in my home country are also calling for! They just want peace, you see…
Oh, she's not a Putinist. She's just the sort of weird leftie who thinks that not having an army and being neutral means you don't get invaded. Proof: Ireland wasn't invaded in WWII.
(yes, this is utterly ludicrous. Fortunately, she's President of Ireland, which is a tiny and militarily irrelevant country and her role there has zero military significance)
" Fortunately, she's President of Ireland, which is a tiny and militarily irrelevant country"
I'm not sure there is a country in the world the free rides more than Ireland.
Ah, yes, the Putinists in my home country also don’t openly support Putin. They just want the innocent Ukrainians to live in peace and not be forced to fight on behalf of NATO. They’re just doing it because they’re pacifists, of course!
That strategy was never tested by the barbarian hordes who stopped with Great Britain. That ended up saving civilization. Maybe she was on to something.
>I think *all* countries in the EU have elections to elect their Presidents<
Right. Portugal had an election a week or two ago. It puzzles me this system isn't questioned a bit more. If the goal is a truly ceremonial presidency, why not remove the office *completely* from politics? IIRC in the Portuguese election, the campaign between the two candidates got pretty...political and a bit vituperative. Which I think means the incoming president will obviously be viewed as a rather partisan figure, no matter what the constitution may stipulate. But I'm no expert on Portuguese politics, maybe that's wrong (I happened to catch a news story about the election on, I think, Reuters).
Of course, some (most?) "ceremonial" presidencies (just like plenty of monarchies) *do* retain some residual powers. That fact and the aforementioned intrusion of electoral politics makes me think: a lot of these offices aren't really so purely ceremonial. But IMHO they ought to be! Hence my preference for dispensing with elections...
(IIRC Israel has gone about as far as you can go to make the Presidency highly, purely ceremonial in nature.)
I think the idea is to give the person public legitimacy. It's not really true that these are purely ceremonial roles- the president in a parliamentary system is involved in creating & dissolving governments. Technically the parties that have successfully formed a coalition and will meet with him/her for permission to create a government. This is high-stakes stuff, just behind the scenes
I think that the problem is that you can’t get the politics out of politics! Just as the apolitical Supreme Court in the US might potentially have some partisan inclinations (that’s what my American friends tell me), apolitical positions in the EU aren’t apolitical either. The funny thing is that AFAIK the desire to directly elect the ceremonial President is supported by saying that this will make the position LESS political than giving that right to the political parties in the legislature. (Also good point about the fact that usually the President has some power on paper that just mostly refuses to use.) If you have a direct election for President, then the people can select their favorite actor or singer or football player. Elections from the legislature tend to not do that.
>I think that the problem is that you can’t get the politics out of politics!<
Not completely, that's true. I guess I'd say we can try to minimize the political element, though. Some institutional structures are better at that than others.
>Just as the apolitical Supreme Court<
A body with as much power as SCOTUS could never be remotely apolitical. That's just a fantasy. But it seems to me an office whose sole purpose is giving toasts at state banquets and presiding over important ceremonies is a very different animal.
>AFAIK the desire to directly elect the ceremonial President is supported by saying that this will make the position LESS political than giving that right to the political parties in the legislature.<
Sure. That makes sense. What I'm thinking of isn't a parliamentary process but something more automatic. Like, in the American context, imagine if we had a body called "The Presidential College." Federal judges could join upon reaching the age of 60. The most senior member of this College under 80 years old becomes Vice President when a vacancy arises (he/she must leave the judiciary), and the VP succeeds to the White House when the President leaves office. One year term. Non-interference in politics is part of the deal. Senate can remove a President by simple majority vote for any reason (ie, corruption scandal, infirmity, political activity). Or whatever. There are a million different versions of ideas like this.
> imagine if we had a body called "The Presidential College."
You should consider working in fantasy or science fiction. Institutional world-buliding as good as this doesn't grow on trees. It adds great depth and generates hooks for great plot points.
“A body with as much power as SCOTUS could never be remotely apolitical. That's just a fantasy. But it seems to me an office whose sole purpose is giving toasts at state banquets and presiding over important ceremonies is a very different animal.”
I agree with this, but I think that the problem is that even a totally powerless President still has a lot of prestige. The winning political parties want to reward some of their long-serving members, and that is an incentive for politicization. In a US context, even if the President had no real power, people would still want to be the person representing the country on its 250th birthday, for example.
I also think that part of what’s happening here is that people don’t think that much about the President in a ceremonial EU context, so there isn’t a strong incentive to spend time thinking about a less political process. There are usually more pressing problems to worry about.
"Elections" yes but not necessarily with the whole electorate--the Wikipedia article you link to, for example, explains that "[o]nly members of Italian Parliament and regional delegates are entitled to vote." The President of Germany is elected similarly.
This is correct, but the Chancellor of Germany is also elected by the Bundestag, not the whole electorate.
Yes but the Bundestag is deliberately supposed to reflect the broad opinions of the German electorate via proportional representation. The Bundesvammerlung (the body that elects the president of Germany) is deliberately not broadly representative of the electorate, but of the institutions of state, to reduce his legitimacy to exercise power.
And "who should be chancellor" is a central issue in national elections even if the specific mechanism is indirect election (as it technically is for the US president as well). That's not true for the German president.
The operating costs for Air Force One almost certainly exceed those of Buckingham Palace. We have not rejected pomp and circumstance.
Weird comparison!
Ok well, i put you in charge of getting the average American to not give a damn about the British royal family.
The people like pomp and circumstance, and you can't just edit human nature.
This doesn't really hold up historically. Maybe the founding fathers didn't want as much ceremony as kings, but they certainly believed in some pomp for the president (receptions, uniforms, 4th of July celebrations, etc.)
There's no reason to think any strain of American politics would have a problem with the president participating in the olympic ceremonies. So if that's what you want to argue for fine, but saying it's in the American tradition is misleading
Beat me to it. The avatar of a country should never be held by only one person, and it should never be held regularly, because all humans are flawed, and will always have disagreements with each other over many things.
We could switch the turkey pardons to two top members of the Senate. They aren't real pardons, after all ;)
A bipartisan turkey pardon haha
And off with the whole diplomatic protocols, red carpets, state dinners, turkey pardons, and other assorted dog and pony shows.
Why no state dinners? It seems like a pretty low cost effort of showing respect for another nation you’re trying to make diplomatic moves on.
The actual problem with state dinners is we hold them for heads of state and not heads of government. So King Charles, who is an unimportant person in world policy, receives one, but the British Prime Minister, one of the most powerful people in the world, does not.
I think we should reallocate most of these functions to the Speaker of the House, as the most direct representative of the people.
Or we can be normal and have a ceremonial President and executive…um… I like Chancellor for a title. President continues to be elected by the Electoral College, but the electors *must* be elected by the lower house of the state legislature.
https://tinyurl.com/yz2uhncp
I wrote an EXTENSIVE Quora post back in the day about all this…
Basically, my conclusion was that the best way to resolve the design contradictions between the Senate, House, EC, and presidency, was to convert the EC into a coalition-building exercise within a multiparty environment created by RCV for Senate seats and STV for an enlargedHouse with a min-max of 3-5 seats per district — likewise, the EC would be semi-proportionalized along these same lines.
This gets you an EC that HAS to elect a President, but with usually no one party able to wield a pure majority.
The advantage here is that due to quirks of how the Constitution is written, it doesn’t really require any amendments to be passed. But admittedly, it would take a bit of getting-used to, and I never got around to figuring out a transitional solution.
The 12th Amendment requires that the President be elected by a raw majority of EC votes- not a plurality. That's why PR for the EC doesn't work
This discussion is based on what are considered defined norms regardless of the defined political, governmental or ceremonial roles. All goes to hell in a hand basket when norms are ignored and character is missing leaving most system perceived as inadequate.
Take 'em out to eat at a nice restaurant
The dual role of the President is a problem, but it would be much less of a problem if we hadn’t let the presidency become so much more powerful than the other branches of government.
This is really the core issue. The Executive has way too much power and Congress today has very little interest in protecting its institutional role, so does nothing to rein it in.
But all of the other developed countries have very powerful executives too. The British & Canadian PM is arguably more powerful than the US President.
The real issue is allowing an unqualified loon to win the Presidency via primaries. I'd say I'm pro-strong executive otherwise, and anyways 'weak executive but strong Congress' isn't really how any developed country works
The PMs in those countries are elected by the parliament, and can be removed by a simple majority vote. This means you don’t have conflicts where one party controls the executive and the other controls the legislature. That may not be our current situation, but it might be starting in 2027.
It’s a different kind of power in a parliamentary system with different checks and restraints. Executives in parliamentary systems aren’t independently elected, nor do they have separate powers untouchable by the legislature. Parties are stronger and can replace who leads them. Parliamentary coalitions can form to bring down a government and replace a bad PM. Usually, a Prime Minister will have to keep a coalition together. Etc.
One thing Newt Gingrich got right was trying to swing the pendulum of power back to Congress. He certainly wielded more power from that position than anyone since. Controlling the Senate is fine if you just want to obstruct things, but I miss legislators who want to legislate.
I think the Founders considered having some kind of triumvirate presidency, but that never seems to work for long.
Maybe this flows both ways, though? Maybe when the head of govt has all the trappings of a king, executive power becomes harder to constrain.
No, it’s the cowardly congresscritters who are all too happy let the President do their thing. Even when they’re out of power they can run against the current President.
The whole thing about the 250th becoming a celebration of the Donald is really bumming me out. Yes, I get that it shouldn't be that way. Yes, I am patriotic; I literally taught American history for years. Yes, I get that I should ignore the Donald and view this as a celebration of America.
But it doesn't feel that way to me. Maybe I'll feel differently when July rolls around.
You're welcome to come to Boston, where we'll be celebrating a bunch of long-dead founding fathers, not Trump
I mean I live in New York; live in Nassau county but commute to Manhattan. My area definitely has its share of Trump fans and given its Long Island they are obnoxiously loud about it. But in general, blaring headlines in December 2024 notwithstanding which made it seem like every man in New York under 30 was a Trump fan, I live in a pretty left of center area. Point being I have a hard time believing the 250th celebrations here are going to much of Trump jerk off session like might be the case in places like Alabama or West Virginia.
It’ll also happen right smack in the middle of the World Cup which is amazing to think about. So the 250th will be happening with games going on literally that day. So the entire world’s eyes will be on the US that day.
And it’s basically the ultimate dream for Trump; to be the host of the world’s biggest tv show. I can’t see how he doesn’t try to make the entire thing all about him.
I actually hope I’m wrong about this but I think we underrate the possibility how much the World Cup is a real Trumpism coming to its ultimate conclusion moment.
There's an opportunity for a stroke to do the funniest thing ever.
This will just lead to the worst conspiracy theories ever.
Thanks for giving me another opportunity for despair
An important consequence of the 2024 election but I never saw anyone talk about it.
I live in Philly, so we’re probably going to go hard on Ben Franklin and Independence Hall. Hopefully they stick with fireworks over the art museum, and Orange stays in DC.
I like to think about an alternate history book where Franklin is our first president, the capital of the northern states stays in Philly until a proper capitol district is built along the Susquehanna, and the Great Seal has a turkey on it.
Then again, Franklin complained about the “swarthy Germans” moving into Pennsylvania, so maybe not so great after all.
>The whole thing about the 250th becoming a celebration of the Donald is really bumming me out.<
Don't worry, the year after next Trump gets to preside over the LA Olympics. Yipee!
DOGE recalled the grants going to cities to prepare the 250th. They hate this country and only seek to enrich and celebrate their corruption.
I mean, I don’t want to see Trump mugging to the camera on the 250th, so that might be the best thing DOGE did.
Lots of parliaments have shitty democratic outcomes and governance. The move towards a more imperial presidency has been bad for the U.S., but I don’t know if a parliamentary system would be any better in the U.S.
I strongly disagree. The US is going the way of Latin America banana republic presidencies because we're allowing a demagogue to build a direct connection with the voters and then advance that into almost unlimited political power. Our unique twist on it is that we use primaries to remove what should be the fundamental strength of political parties- picking their own nominees and boxing demagogues out. Just being frank- voters should not be allowed to pick the executive, it's too demagogic power in one place. And then, the President is too hard to remove once in office.
Parliaments are superior because they remove picking the head of the party from the voters, and then the executive can be removed at any time if they look wonky. It's a fundamentally superior political system. Parliaments are a social technology that works, it's an advancement in the way that tractors are superior at their job to horses
I hear you but I think what's really going on is downstream of technological and economic changes. The UK has had, what, 6 prime ministers in the last 10 years (and the next may well be Farage)? Germany which is probably closer to what a parliamentary system would look like in the US has been stuck in a state of paralysis and ineffectual leadership as the post war mainstream fights increasingly hard to contain far right political insurgency. All of these countries are using illiberal mechanisms to prevent even more illiberal leaders and parties from taking power.
This isn't to say that our system is beyond reproach or couldn't be improved but there are limits to what proceduralism can guarantee in any system. At a certain point the people have to believe in liberalism (or at least republicanism or whatever) and the system has to deliver the goods. It's also far from clear to me that a different system would contain Trump. Anyone who has MAGA level support would be a factor in politics and could potentially form a government.
Up until Trump, I would have agreed that the US system has clearly worked better even with poor presidents. But Trump is violating the law repeatedly and facing no consequences. He's not even trying to change the law, just ignoring what's there. And in the process, tearing down alliances, instituting tariffs, and numerous other things that are deeply unpopular *even within his own party!*
And he faces no consequences because there is only one real check on him and it requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate.
I think better or worse is something one could argue endlessly. I wouldn't necessarily go that far and didn't intend to in my last comment. What I'm trying to say is that no democratic system prevents what is happening. The most important opportunity to check Trump was November 4, 2024, and the American people chose not to. Failing impeachment and conviction, the next most important check is the 22nd Amendment.
But if 77 or 78 million people are going to vote for the guy I don't know what would keep him from taking power. Political parties that poll worse form governments in parliamentary systems and whether and to what degree they're held accountable for any violations of the law is as subject to the vaguaries of politics and culture as what's going on with this. Corrupt crazies survive votes of no confidence for nakedly partisan reasons. At a certain point the only solution is for parties and people that behave better to go out and win elections. There is no weird trick or constitutional catch all.
Right but this is kind of nihilism to make the two systems of governance appear to be equally decent. Yes, parliaments are imperfect and can collapse, they're not bulletproof. They're still an improvement over a presidential system. There's a wealth of political science research that parliamentary countries do better on everything from economic growth to personal freedoms and every other metric under the sun. Yes, this even compares poor countries with parliaments to poor countries with a president.
A parliament is a big step forward in social technology even if it's not perfect
Someone would have to break down how these studies control for 'Madisonian system is in Latin America' versus 'parliamentary system is in Europe.' I'm not sure there's enough data and boy would someone have to work hard to convince me they're comparing apples to apples. The personal freedom thing kind of just makes me laugh, given that in all of what are regarded as our peer democracies people can and are prosecuted for shit posting on the internet. No free speech, no exclusionary rule under the 4th Amendment, kitchen knives treated as weapons, near elimination of jury trials but it's us who aren't free.
Anyway it isn't like presidential systems can't work. France has one and ours has stood for arguably longer than any parliamentary system in the old world, save maybe the UK, depending on when you clock the complete neutering of the monarchy. I also don't think it's nihilism to note that the vast majority of the push on this subject is entirely based on partisan sour grapes and a backwards looking outcome based analysis of the process- or 'I didn't win but it is the system, and not me, that failed.'
I think the idea is in a parliamentary system, you wouldn't have 78 million people voting for somebody like Trump. You'd have 20 or 30 million people who identify with the far right. There were plenty of trump-skeptical people that just didn't want to vote for Harris, and in a parliamentary system they'd get peeled away from the extremists, and then you get a coalition government which is ideally more moderate.
As I understand it the way Latin America has (sort of) curbed the power of their presidents in the last 40 years is just much more frequent impeachments. Their legislatures have gotten much stronger, and much more trigger-happy with impeaching. But I think the barrier to do so is generally lower than the US- typically 60% or even a bit less
I mean, or Fanny Willis could have not thrown important work to her friend with benefits like the whole F-ing nation wasn't watching.
Which don't get me wrong, I'm very, very for Congress re-asserting itself. I'm just saying the idea that checking Trump takes re-writing our constitution is not true. This could be stopped we as a polity have chosen not to and chosen leaders who have chosen not to.
What could congress do right now to stop Trump from having ICE to continue to abuse people, attack Venezuela & Iran, pull back from our international alliances, charge tariffs to our allies, send justice department prosecutors after his enemies?
They can impeach him or pass laws. Both would require a 2/3 majority to achieve over his objections. That threshold is too high.
I think we should allow the president to be removed by the House with a 55% (240) vote.
I think 55% is a bit too extreme (Obama would have been impeached twice, in either 2010 or 2014), but I could see 57.5% or so. The President would have to keep all of his own party on his side, assuming that the opposition is united against him.
Would probably increase midterm voter turnout, because presumably the President's supporters would be more incentivized to show up too
And the thing is that our system worked quite well for a long time and has resulted in largely stable governance. That has broken down, but I think it’s more realistic to try to get back to what worked before instead dream about a parliamentary system.
Yea I think a lot of the pining comes from an at best unproven faith that your average back bencher MP has a lot more spine than your average back bencher House Representative and that a person or movement capable of capturing 25-30% of the voters can just be cut off and contained through constitutional and/or procedural channels. That's not possible in any democratic form of government.
I think our problems are fundamentally cultural and less about specific institutional structures.
Culture is part of it, but I think the move to primaries and various other things, like campaign finance, that have weakened our two parties to the point that they are merely brands, has been the big structural change. Someone like Trump would never have been able to take over the Republican brand and completely remake its politics, for instance.
I think the move to primaries is reflective of our more individualistic culture.
The move to primaries was because people wanted the democratic process to extend to candidate selection, and we have since seen that the folks in those smoke filled rooms of yesteryear had more sense than primary voters.
This can be fixed within the parties themselves, and I think they may find it to their benefit to do so. I doubt the Democratic Party wants some variation on Trump to capture their party; it could have been him, he went R because the field was weak.
The US and the world have gone through intense periods of cultural change. Half the world disappeared under communism for decades, another part tried to invade and murder their neighbors. We could have gone the same way. The US responded with a powerful program of centralized economic management and came through that with its institutions intact.
Our system in fact led to a civil war less than 75 years after it was set up. It achieved a point of stasis afterwards in part from fear of another civil war and in part because all the political will of the South was premised on maintaining Jim Crow, which created a lot of ideological heterogeneity within the parties. This is to say that the stability of the U.S. system, such that it existed, was based on contingencies rather than as a result of its structure.
I don't see how a parliamentary system would avoid any of that. And stable governance isn't necessarily the same thing as good/moral governance.
It's not an argument in favor of parliamentary systems (though there are plenty of those) but rather a negation of the idea that "our system worked quite well for a long time."
We need to understand what we mean by "worked quite well" and what we mean by saying it's "broken down." The last nine years help demonstrate that the structure of the Federal Govt encourages growth in Presidential/Executive power because Congress and the courts have only limited checks on it. (Arthur Schlesinger argued that the tendency is almost as old as the office in "The Imperial Presidency.")
The system also seems to encourage Congressional inaction/passivity and Executive action/initiative. Two possible benefits of a parliamentary system are to make the legislature politically accountable for implementing the laws/policies it adopts, and to avoid paralysis when different parties lead the Executive and Congress.
I think the absolute best case scenario is it pretty close to the status quo. Our hypothetical imperial prime minister would be no less empowered and we'd be in a constant state of unpredictable leadership flux. Even if we became multi-party due to the different structure we could still end up in a state of near paralysis like many European parliaments.
The Dutch apparently tax unrealized capital gains. Parliaments can still support bad policies and aren’t a panacea.
I’ll take a badly-designed law passed by a legislature over an illegal tariff regime any day of the week. Legislative processes don’t guarantee perfection, but they at least offer the hope of correcting bad outcomes.
The tariff regime itself comes from broadly worded statutory law that Congress could at any time change.
My overall point is that politics can fail regardless of how we organize democratic institutions. The reason things are failing is because our legislature has abdicated power because they want to abdicate responsibility for what happens. Everything is outsourced to the executive branch.
100%
I would argue that our institutions should reflect our democratic failures. Sure, we might democratically decide to fire every red-haired person into the heart of the sun, or build a 500-foot wall between the US and its largest trading partner. But the systems that do so should be openly reflective of those bad choices, not obfuscatory. Systems that obscure those choices ensure we get all of the bad “truly democratic” decisions, plus a pile of bad intermediate decisions that nobody really wants. There are degrees of badness.
Could we, though? Or rather: if the law was even clearer (it’s pretty clear), would it enforce itself?
Not without a 2/3 majority in both houses to override a presidential veto!
I'm with you. Nothing is perfect. I liked Fareed Zakaria's point that parliamentary systems pull the coalition forming into the election before the government is seated vs. our system when coalition building (or compromise) happens after the election. I mean ... how many example do we need to cite of coalitions breaking down requiring new elections to know it's far from perfect.
I patriotically volunteer to serve the people of the United States as their disempowered Head of State.
I think our problem arose out of the early partisanization of the Presidency. It seems tht the original idea was more of a "city manager" type relation carrying out Congress's policies. And does a PM do that any more than the President. Is the conflation of the head of state head of government really a problem? It is not more that Congress cannot legislate and the Presidents expands power to fill the vaacum?
In a parliamentary system the head of government has support in the legislature and sits in it so it is much easier to actually pass things.
Parliamentary systems ALSO lack the filibuster jamming them up, AND tend to have multiparty systems that provide multiple degrees of freedom for coalition formation.
IMO it’s not exactly that the presidency is broken; Congress was always broken FIRST.
And much harder for the legislature to abdicate its responsibilities.
The individual members do still abdicate their responsibilities to the government. But this means that legislation is passed unscrutinised, rather than not being passed at all. This means that governments - able to pass whatever laws they like - are inclined to confine themselves within their legal powers.
>> This means that governments - able to pass whatever laws they like - are inclined to confine themselves within their legal powers
That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
1. It’s not that legislation is being passed COMPLETELY unscrutinized, but that it’s being written by specific actors — usually either one with power or one with domain expertise, and/or their staff actually doing the writing — and then getting passed either through Secret Congress or overt partisan politics.
2. This doesn’t “incline [them] to confine” themselves, it does quite the opposite — the drafter knows they can sneak in some amount of hidden loopholes for themselves with few others being the wiser, or worse, being IN on it.
I think you’re confused about which country I was writing about. Parliamentary governments (unlike presidential ones) can pass whatever laws they want because they have a majority in their pocket.
Parliamentary governments are able to pass more or less whatever legislation they like, unlike presidential governments. As a result, when exercising powers, they tend to follow the law - because if they don’t like it, they can just change it.
If they lose in court, they’ll just announce that they’ll change the law to overturn the verdict.
Ahh okay. I stand corrected.
Sure. Thee is not exceeding of legistlative authority. But cearel, the original idea of the Presidency was not as a rule makers. That’s why the Bill of Rights says ”Congress shall pass no law …”
You can see that in the original constitutional scheme where the guy who lost the election for president (but came in second) got to be the vice president. Those guys were surprisingly naive about certain things and we're still dealing with the legacy of that. They fixed some things but only in an ad hoc way.
That wasn’t intentional; it was just a mathematical error they hadn’t thought too hard about.
They actually figured a president would be less partisan than a PM since, in their theory, the branches would compete whereas a PM is just the tool of the majority coalition in parliament (which is ground zero for faction politics). Didn’t work out that way of course.
If that was the original idea, they wouldn't have made George Washington the first president. He was not a guy devoted to the idea of just carrying out Congress's policies.
I think in context of a small republic only tenuously free of the former colonial power, surrounded by hostile native tribes and other still formidable enough European empires it makes a kind of sense to centralize defense and diplomacy in a coequal branch of government like the constitution does. The sense only starts breaking down in the mid 20th century then becomes a real problem with the combination of total Congressional dereliction of duty both via the administrative state and for reasons of partisan gamesmanship, plus a modern mass media environment where a single person can set an agenda in a way a larger deliberative body struggles to.
It wasn't really a small Republic, America had a bigger population than Morocco, Sweden Brazil or Ethiopia just after independence.
I don't agree and would say that compared to contemporaneous threats (which did not include Morocco, Sweden, Brazil, or Ethiopia) it was small and relatively disparate. Remember, no one in 1789 knew what would happen in Europe over the next couple of decades that ultimately knocked the French and Spanish out of the game as New World powers (plus the British were very much still around, particularly on the high seas) and there was a persistent fear of consolidation among native tribes into something more threatening, which did eventually materialize. I'm not saying you couldn't have made a case for something different but at minimum the War of 1812 and events that precipitated it make the Article 2 structure not crazy in light of the world that existed and came to be in the decades immediately after.
Certainly a much bigger figure than anyone in Congress, but what specific expansions of Executive power did you have in mind?
I'm not sure it makes sense to talk in terms of "expansions", since Washington was the one defining what Presidential power would actually be.
It's pretty notable that he didn't choose to consult with Congress before issuing the Proclamation of Neutrality, if you're looking for one example.
I'd be more convinced if we could point to parliamentary democracies being better run. In theory there are no limits on the British Parliament other than the King. If they want to build more housing and solve their biggest problem they easily could and with no judicial review. They just...don't.
in theory you're right but in practice it seems - not so much.
Yes, I feel like American fans of parliamentary government (including our host) really need to grapple more with the sheer level of dysfunction that has developed in the British parliamentary system in recent decades.
The US is the most politically unstable developed country man! I don't love everything about the British system, but they're not backsliding into Peronism. There are only 3 developed countries with a President (US/South Korea/Taiwan), and SK just had a coup attempt last year. Seems notable that the only semi-presidential developed country in France is also in terrible shape.
Parliaments clearly have a better track record than presidencies among rich countries in the 21st century, and it isn't close
My comment, which was replying to BZC's reply about the inability of the British government to promote building more housing, was in reference to the fact that, until about 30 seconds ago, the overwhelmingly most common critique of the U.S. presidential system was that it features many veto points preventing Good Things™ from being achieved, which parliamentary systems were supposed to be much better at delivering because, by definition, the policy goals of the legislature and executive were overwhelmingly aligned.
The main Good Thing that rich-country parliamentary systems do is not collapse into autocracy. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs for me as a citizen, I prioritize 'not backsliding into an authoritarian regime' over like 'zoning reform'. The US is descending into Peronism specifically because a charismatic demagogue was able to make a direct connection with the voters, who don't care that much about 'threatening to arrest your opponents as a campaign platform' if they think he's good for the economy.
I am specifically making the pro-parliamentary argument because I think it's more stable and much less prone to democratic backsliding. 'Getting things done' is the next rung down in Maslow's hierarchy, but I'm still going to prioritize not doing this [gesticulates at everything] over like zoning laws
"The main Good Thing that rich-country parliamentary systems do is not collapse into autocracy."
You seem to have forgotten about the most troubling examples.
What are the rich countries parliamentary systems that have collapsed into autocracy in the last 80 years?
British Leyland, the Winter of Discontent...? The track record is shall we say spotty.
>Winter of Discontent
They famously solved this problem!
Which developed parliamentary country is sliding into Peronism today, or had something similar to January 6th? Seems notable to me that the only 1/6 equivalent would be South Korea's coup attempt last year, and they're...... a presidential system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_plot_allegations
We should have an official Uncle Sam who does the ceremonial stuff
Samuel L. Jackson, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Sounds good to me. Only risk I can see is if some take his classic line of "English, motherfucker, do you speak it?" too extremely.
Definitely a top-tier choice, but my personal vote would be for Snoop Dogg
I was taking the name a little more literally. Sam Elliott would also be good.
Sam Darnold, a true American comeback story.
GEQBUS
Sam Worthington crying on his giant pile of Avatar money while he waits for a phone call
Sam Rockwell caressing his Oscar while also waiting on a much smaller bed of money.
Plus he played W in Vice! I never thought I’d miss W.
Rotate him with Auntie Sam for maximum effect.
I volunteer Joseph, though he will have to change his name.
Arguably, we were fortunate that the 200th anniversary was presided over by president who nobody had voted for, nobody had voted against, and was not particularly well-liked by his own party.
My understanding was the bicentennial was accompanied by a lot of nervous soul searching about the state of democracy and the future of the nation.
This adds to my theory that the 70s were hated while people lived then but were culturally our greatest decade lol.
Matt writes about the ceremonial role of the president, but... who cares? Does anyone really think that's the core of the issue?
The merit of presidentialism is in the separation of powers. We distinguish the executive power from the legislative power in ways parliamentary systems typically don't. That's the core of the issue.
If Matt wants to argue about the merits, he should do that, instead of... whatever this was.
I "Liked" your reply because I agree with you overall, but Matt's hardly unique in this. There's a certain segment of "poli sci nerds" who really do find themselves deeply troubled about the lack of an American national figurehead. (My main political science professor in college was one of those individuals and that was back in the 1990s. If he's still alive, I have to imagine he's been crawling the walls for the past decade.)
What is the point of writing articles like this, about how our presidentialism isn't a good system, that never seem to be backed up or followed through with support for some of the more logical, achievable measure to reduce presidential power and make the President a less important figure, relative to a Congress and and State governments?
Relax, this is a short themed take on a holiday from a newsletter that takes holidays off and provides content twice a day 5 days a week.
As someone who had this happen to me a few days ago, I want to go on the record and say it's really shitty and dismissive for semi-representatives of Slow Boring to go into the comments telling people "relax" over completely reasonable, non-hysterical statements.
The community discussion is one of the big value adds here, and if you or Milan or whomever go around shitting on any ideas you don't like or that you think challenge Matt in an unfair way, I'm going to start having second thoughts about whether this is the best use of my $80.
I’ve been moderating for a while now and I have always tried to foster an environment that allows for healthy disagreement with the daily post. I found this comment to be pretty silly because, as this post notes, it’s a holiday and slow boring either reruns other posts or publishes shorter more relaxed content on those days.
I’m not saying I’m going to ban this person for this silly comment. I’m just pushing back because I don’t think it disagrees with the article in a helpful way. Obviously, it would be very hard to shift away from our current presidential system!
Sorry if I came off as unnecessarily grumpy in my comment, I had just come back from a really tiring back packing trip in kota kinabalu and my hotel room was gross
I disagree with Matt pretty often in the comments, and sometimes with Ben directly, but the moderators have never been an issue. I think the actual comment was the problem, not the disagreement.
Calm down, bro.
Yeah, I liked today's post and upvoted Oliver's answer, but "relax" is a truly shitty way to shut down a sincere question, especially one that elicited interesting substantive answers.
It's essentially "don't worry your pretty little head about it", but for everyone.
I'm happy to read pieces like today's, but Allan seemed perfectly relaxed to me.
He doesn't have to pretend problems are solvable.
It is good epistemics to separate diagnosis and solutions, because you risk adjusting the diagnosis to support solutions you support, especially if there is a chance of an unsolvable problem.
So again, what is the point?
Is it necessary for a post to have a solution? Just naming a solution doesn't make it happen.
It's okay to acknowledge that some things are both suboptimal and intractable.
Because it was an interesting read, to spark debate, to vent his views on pointless holidays or a Straussian call for the US to install a king.
I understand that Matt is to a large extent a political operator who uses his newsletter to influence the world, but the notion that all political writing must militate for a specific change seems very unusual and not at all how the genre has been seen in the past.
I've been asking for a post on what Democrats agenda should be to rein in Presidential power that Trump's abuses have so exposed. Matt will say end the filibuster but what else?
What Matt's addressing here is the fact that a future Republican Congress can easily undo restrictions on Republican Presidents and pass new restrictions on Democratic Presidents. We've seen examples of this behavior in Wisconsin and North Carolina. In the US system, there's no long-term change to Presidential power without Constitutional change.
A Republican trifecta can undo restrictions on a Republican President, but I'm not sure easily is correct. Affirmative legislative action is always more difficult than passive acceptance of Presidential action (see how little Trump is even trying to legislate, and there are just many more periods when there is not a trifecta than when there is. Passing new restrictions strictly on a Democratic President would be even harder, it would require veto proof majorities in both houses, and nearly pure unanimity. The latter condition is even more rare than a trifecta, and the former even more difficult a process of vote whipping.
There are Constitutional prerogatives that can't be legislated away. But there is low hanging fruit. I would start with removing every instance that purports to allow a President to act emergently, and follow that with strict legislation about things like recission, how and when money can be moved around withing programs, etc.
I would agree with you in cases of standalone restrictive legislation (or repeal of restrictive legislation). The legislative strategy would be to combine the action with an appropriations bill, continuing resolution, or other bill that can be passed under a rules waiver not requiring a supermajority. (Bringing the parliamentarians along is always a challenge in those cases.) Congress would tie it to a "must-pass" bill and apply the corresponding rules.
I don't see anything related to appropriations as low-hanging fruit because the appropriations process is where all the real power lies in Congress, and where the Executive experiences many of the relatively few Congressional checks on its power.
I think the low-hanging fruit is for Congress to pass legislation to clarify the powers of the President related to "independent" agencies and the discretion of agency leaders.
Sure, but a) legislative and Constitutional changes are not alternatives and b) the latter is very unlikely. So, why not try some legislative fixes?
Yes, absolutely try legislative fixes. We should always avoid false dilemmas.
I hope we can come up with better legislative fixes than the War Powers Act, for example.
Matt may not have a solution, but identifying the problem encourages other smart people to think about how to solve the issue.
Sure, but we're a little beyond "identifying the problem" as being a novel or useful advancement of the public discourse -- it's simply saying the obvious, in a year when unilateral presidential power has upended global trade, slapped tarrifs on friendly neighbor for running a TV commercial critical of the president, sent armed forces into a city to disturb the peace, totally rewritten legislation on car emissions standards, etc, etc, etc.
I don't think it _is_ obvious to most people. Just because you and I have thought of this doesn't mean everyone has.
You know...not every article is for every reader, and that's ok.
There's a major analytical difference between "presidentialism is bad" and "the president should have less power." Both might be true but the point is that you should have a prime minister to do the executive power things and a president to take on the ceremonial role. The conflation of roles isn't a problem you can solve by strengthening Congress at the president's expense, and there are realistic limits on how far you can go with that.
If it hasn't been done already that would be a good topic for some posts--the nuts and bolts of how to actually overhaul our democratic system (or an overhauled version of parliament). Things like one six-year term, mandatory voting (on Saturdays!), and to somehow connect this wonderful tool called the Internet to get more participation from the citizens (instead of being mercilessly hounded for donations,lol).
The problems with "reducing Presidential power" are (1) Presidents have power to expand their powers as heads of a coequal branch, and (2) Congress can lift past restraints when the majority party wins the Presidency.
In a parliamentary system, the legislature runs the Government, not the head of state.
'The legislature' does not run the government in the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan etc. The Prime Minister does, and the PM is quite a bit more powerful than any US President- they tell their party in parliament how they're going to vote on legislation, and it mostly just gets done. I'm unaware of any country, developed or otherwise, that allows Congress to just run things.
Not to pick on you but there's a lot of confusion here in the comments between people who want a parliamentary system but also somehow a weaker executive. Parliaments have a stronger and less constrained executive, not the other way around
I don't feel picked on, maybe in part because your comment seems to miss the key point. In a parliamentary system, the PM is a member of the legislature and is elected by the legislature. This means the PM is almost always the leader of the party holding (directly or in coalition) the majority of parliamentary seats.
The point is not to have a "weaker" executive, but to have a unitary accountable government responsible for making and implementing legislation and policy. In a parliamentary system there is no separation between the legislative and executive functions, so there is no conflict between "coequal" branches of government: the PM is a member of the legislature and can be removed by a simple majority of the legislature at any time. The PM, unlike the Chief Executive in a Presidential system, has no independent constitutional power. As the presumed leader of the party in power, the PM does indeed have great power to drive legislation and policy.
I think we're kind of in agreement, but I just want to note- the British/Canadian/Australian/Japanese PMs dominate their legislature. Frankly, they give orders about what legislation is to be passed. It's a relationship utterly unlike the US system, where individual legislators can choose to defy their party on any vote they want. And removing your PM generally triggers early elections, which no one is eager to do. When these PMs are removed it's generally by a senior committee of their own party.
The PM can be removed by a simple majority, but what I think you're missing is that they can remove an individual legislator from the party far easier. Trudeau ejected 2 members of his own party for defying him during a scandal, Starmer is blocking a rival from running for office in his district, etc. Again it's a hierarchical relationship where the Prime Minister tells the legislature what's going to be passed
There are a few things going on here that are worth distinguishing:
- the relationship between the government and the parliamentary majority is always going to be tighter in a parliamentary system, given the dynamic of confidence
- US political parties are especially decentralized and non-hierarchical, with even the ability to run on a party label being controlled by a state-run mass election among party members registered by the state (and states with open primaries not even that)
- all of the examples you list are of parliamentary systems that always or near-always have single-party governments
I'm not sure if you have a broader point you were making. But yes
>all of the examples you list are of parliamentary systems that always or near-always have single-party governments
This is by design- I think this is the superior system, I'm not into coalitions
I agree there are risks in a parliamentary system. I think your point about party discipline is a good one, and I'd certainly agree the PM is at the top of a hierarchy. Individual legislators can always defy leadership but must accept consequences, just as in the US system. Losing all committee assignments or getting the wrong ones, for example, is deadly in the US Congress.
In many cases, the PM risks the majority/coalition if the expelled members - expelled from the party but not the parliament - join with enough opposition members. The PM's ability to dictate legislation has practical limits.
For example, Keir Starmer won't survive in office by removing Labour MPs who oppose him from the party.
One of many odd things about the US Constitution is that it's not consistent at all about the separation of powers. The president rules the executive branch, but also has huge sway (even control) over legislation through the presidential veto. Thus, in addition to the president's tremendous influence over his own party in Congress, the president has an official, constitutional power over legislation as well.
It seems that the Framers thought that the president would only veto legislation for Constitutional reasons, but since Jackson, presidents have unabashedly vetoed bills simply because they didn't agree with the intention.
The president's power over legislation is not matched by any equivalent Congressional power over the executive. Congress's power over the executive is limited. It can try to defund things, but it can't fire anyone (impeachment is unworkable), nor can it hire anyone. If the president isn't "executing" a law, there's de facto nothing Congress can do other than criticize.
It's an interesting thought experiment to consider how the US would have developed if the president didn't have the veto, and/or Congress did have more power over the executive.
The thing that stuck with me most from reading some of the Federalist is that its authors assumed the legislature would naturally be the most powerful branch and the executive would be the weakest. Impeachment IS the legislature's check on the executive! It's not inherently unworkable! But it's harder to trigger than the veto as a way to increase the executive's power a bit relative to the legislature's.
On paper, impeachment is only as difficult as overriding a veto, and that has actually happened many times. In practice, people are much more afraid of FIRING the head of their party than of disagreeing with them on some legislation. But it might have turned out differently if we'd had a successful impeachment earlyish in the country's life.
I think it's worth pointing out that a big part of the problem has been Congressional cowardice on exercising its powers. It was pretty widely expected, as I understand it, by the "Framers" that Congress would, in fact, be pretty energetic about pursuing impeachment, defunding things, etc.
I don't know if "Congressional cowardice" is really the right framing for that since the Founders themselves were the ones who did nothing once they were in Congress.
The Founders may have expected something but they did absolutely nothing 8 years later when Adams was a disastrous President (from the perspective of Presidential-Congressional power) including starting a war without Congressional approval and putting people who criticised him in prison.
Every single Founding Father was still alive and active in politics at the time.
Madison and Jefferson's reaction to Adams wasn't to try for impeachment or defunding but to instead argue that states could nullify laws they didn't like and should consider secession.
So I'm somewhat dubious, whatever they may have claimed, that they actually believed strong Congressional action against an Imperial presidency was ever a realistic option.
Greetings from Svalbard. If you think Trump is going to put you in a concentration camp, you should know your rights under the Svalbard Treaty of 1920. As a citizen of a signatory, you have the right to live and work in Svalbard without a visa, though the Norwegian government can expel you if you cannot support yourself. There are jobs in hospitality and knowledge workers can work remotely so it really is practical. You could also bounce back and fourth between Svalbard and countries like Canada that give 180 day visa free access. Remote work from Canada could be practical if technically illegal, irl work generally would be impossible.
Do the bears really wear armor?
No but you are required to carry a rifle or have an armed guide to leave town.
Those winters would be tough but one year there would be an adventure.
We went snowmobiling today. Negative 17 degrees celsius, significantly warmer than Lapland but the wind makes it feel colder. Any fresh you don’t cover gets frost bitten within 30 minutes, but that’s only 4 months a year.
But it is an interesting bullshit test. If you really think Trump is a safety threat, you would deal with the polar winters.
"Any fresh you don’t cover gets frost bitten within 30 minutes"
That's true in Chicago, too.
For some definitions of "fresh."
As someone who isn’t eager to leave the US but is also skeptical that anyone else would have any of us if shit really hit the fan here, this is appreciated.
Need to be a first mover, though.
And to be clear, I don’t think Trump is a danger to me personally, but depending what happens I could see serious disorder.
I lived in a democracy and I plan to die in one or fighting for one.
I would not emigrate because my coalition lost an election or because our president were an asshole.
But if the midterms are not free and fair and remedial efforts fail, In out. Better to try to start over at 49 (we’ve got plenty of cushion but would absolutely have to downsize) than to pass under the yoke.
Precisely.
The fact that Lincoln and Washington don’t have their own days off is wild to me to this day. Just sort of the umpteenth example of the downstream consequences of the South being a one party authoritarian dictatorship for so long given what power that gave to “Dixiecrats” in Congress*.
Also, I’ve said a number of times I’m absolutely on board with the idea there should be at least one Federal holiday every month. The fact there is no Federal holidays from Presidents’ Day to Memorial Day is nuts to me (part of why my wife has convinced me that March not February is actually the worst month given March is usually still pretty cold and “wintery” and we don’t really see consistently warmer weather until mid April. At least where I live). Like I feel like there are plenty of candidates for holidays. Also, if we’re brainstorming easy “Populist” ways for Dems to appeal to swing or rural voters that they are no longer the party that caters to “They/Them” first then I’d say coming out for making the day after Easter a Federal holiday seems an easy win for me.
* The thing that gives me hope and worry about this Trumpy moment is that we already have experienced having an authoritarian dictatorship in our borders. I’m going to be the upteenth person to point out that the U.S. was not a true free and fair democracy until 1965. So my “hope” is that this country was actually able to survive and become a true democracy after 100 years of an authoritarian terror campaign. My “worry” is the “Stephen Miller element” (as I call it) clearly have a playbook in mind they want to recapture. I actually don’t think Milller (and Musk who’s part of this “element”) represents anywhere close to a majority of the America public but he does represent a more significant minority than too many people want to admit (and based on polling a disturbingly high percentage of Republicans). So yeah my worry is we clearly as a country came to accept a world of actual authoritarianism in a large part of our country as just sort of the way things were in our past.
"The fact that Lincoln and Washington don’t have their own days off is wild to me to this day."
I guess if you made something other than their birthdays the days of celebration? Because, while I'm very willing to believe that the "Dixiecrats" had something to do with the consolidated holiday, their birthdays also were only 10 days a part (Lincoln on February 12 and Washington on February 22), which to me makes combining them into a single holiday seem pretty obvious, especially with the earlier one coming just six weeks or so after New Year's Day (the consolidation having happened before Martin Luther King Day existing).
I'd go a step further and say that one day off for everyone who's served as president (two days off for non-consecutive terms) would be cool.
I have to say while I am no fan of (and did not ever vote for) Trump, I would actively hurl myself off of my balcony before I sat through a 250th anniversary celebration Mc'd by Kamala Harris.
Or just not watch it and live to play with your grandkids?
That won't be happening either way.
Yes, tbh I've decided not to have grandkids myself.
"Too late, too late, too bad, too bad," the poor liberal cried as the goon from the newly founded Beliefs Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security grabbed his collar and flung him out of the open helicopter door over the Gulf of America. "Parliamentary system, please," he moaned, unheard, as he plunged towards the cold, choppy waters . . . .