Perhaps something along the lines of a semi-parliamentary prime-ministerial system? A directly elected PM, a confidence chamber elected under a majority bonus system, a mutual political suicide pact on motions of no confidence (snap elections immediately upon no confidence). An indirectly elected upper house as a house of review. A ceremonial president elected jointly by both houses. We'll get the stability of a presidential system with some of the flexibility of a parliamentary system, and the separation of the hats of state and government. Another way is the typical semi-presidential system, but I think Matt would be reluctant as it has an independently and directly elected head of state with still having a major political role.
The UK was a constitutional monarchy after the Restoration. It generally has worked well for the UK, and even Canada and Australia, with some limits.
When Parliament is not in session, someone has to make decisions, like how to respond to an attack. One person can make quick decisions and provide leadership when a body of elected officials might take weeks, so the problem in Canada and the UK has been that PMs have acquired power, as the expense of Parliament. Canada is particularly top down, with no checks and balances other than the courts. The King and Governor-General are little more than figureheads with few powers, but still somewhat vague.
The US courts, and Congress, keep giving more and more power to the President, and the Courts have claimed more and more power too. The Senate is undemocratic.
The House should be the most important body in US politics, but it has let power slip to other branches... and nobody seems able to reverse this.
This is a stunningly sweeping statement considering 250 years of Presidential democracy led to the wealthiest nation in the history of earth, a commanding force for good in the worst conflict our planet has ever seen, and the first and most crucial steps towards exploring the stars.
But yeah, we've had a few years of bad news cycles, so it was probably all a mistake, right?
The key problem I see with our current executive branch arrangement is that there’s no way for the legislative branch to rein them in when they abuse their power outside a traumatic impeachment and removal. The process for removal is so hard, and so dependent on the buy in of the president’s co-partisans who would likely be sacrificing their careers in their support for it, that it’s functionally impossible. Presidents therefore exist in a default state where they can do whatever they want absent judicial pushback (and even respecting judicial pushback is just a norm that hasn’t been broken….yet). Presidents can veto legislation or budget limits that constrain them (and veto overrides require an absurd super majority). Legislative oversight is mostly toothless. Policing Presidential criminality relies on the DOJ who by norm is supposed to be independent but in practice works for the President. The founders thought they were building a system of checks and balances but actually built a system that makes the President a tyrant if they’re willing to be one.
The problem isn't that we get embarrassed if we elect some partisan hack -- it's that the system encourages the election of a partisan hack. And that comes down to the problem that we took a system designed to indirectly select the president and turned it into a direct voting system.
IMO the worst reasoned SCOTUS opinion of all time was Chiaflo which allowed states to bind electors to vote as directed. It's absurd since if a state can bind an elector why can't it bind a senator. Both are federal officials voted in by the people voting on federal issues -- hell we have more evidence about the original intent of the framers re: electors than basically any other issue save trivial things like the age requirements.But as much as I hate Chiaflo I must admit that the original system was dead when we moved to pledged delegates.
However, I want to suggest that maybe Congress could get clever and force states to choose electors say 4 or 8 years before they vote creating at least a strong pressure to people to choose someone who can exercise judgement on their behalf.
The idea that people are going to pick Electors without caring about who they Elect is fundamentally absurd and AFAIK never really happened even before they were formally bound. You can't bind senators because the Senate has to consider an open set of bills, so you can't know what to bind them to. The set of presidential candidates in a given election is both finite and small and people already know which one they want elected.
Maybe it’s absurd but if you read the debates it is completely and obviously what was intended by the founders. You can read debates and look at what was said in the published material — the founding fathers absolutely expected people to select a bunch of individuals who would then cut deals and make choices to pick the right person. I mean if they weren’t intended to make their own decisions the easier and obvious thing to say was simply: each state shall determine how their electoral votes are to be cast rather than saying each state shall choose electors. Remember they (perhaps stupidly) didn’t expect national parties and expected most political tension to be between states — picking individuals who would negotiate on behalf of those states with the other states just as they had done in the continental congress and when drafting the constitution seemed to make perfect sense to them.
And it doesn’t answer the question as to why states couldn’t pass laws saying: each senator running for office must declare their view on treaty X and must vote as per their declaration in the senate. Sure, maybe they could get around it by voting on some similarly named treaty but that’s obviously not something the states are allowed to do.
—-
And no people will never choose electors without considering who they will vote for but the more remote you make that decision and the more things in between they need to react to the more you force people to choose electors they trust to use judgement. I mean look at how the UK parliament works. Sure, at the start they have a leader but usually they change leaders at the behest of the party several times before they go back to the voters.
I suggested voting for electors 4 years before the electors themselves vote but how about making it 8 or 12 or 16. At some point people will prefer to choose someone whose judgement they trust than someone who is bound so far ahead of time to a particular outcome.
For most of our history hasn't the very fact that we didn't want someone as president who would embarrass us feels like it helped encourage the selection of more statesmanlike individuals. And foreign countries know where the power is, if we have PM Trump who is commander in chief it won't reassure our NATO allies the we have a statesman to cut ribbons. The cost of a little embarasment when we do elect someone like Trump seems worth the extra pressure not to do so.
So no I don't buy the idea that convincing the two offices is a bad idea.
What is a bad idea is combining the offices and then choosing the person to fill that office by direct vote by the people. Some form of indirect election of the president would be a good system -- the error the founding fathers made was giving the electoral college no other duties. They should have explicitly made it either congress (a PM with a term), or some combo of say governors (say to contribute the 2 EC votes per state) plus congress.
The Constitution actually leaves the method for selecting electors up to state legislatures. So changes could be made without an amendment to the US Constitution.
I insist on calling today's holiday by its legal name, Washington's Birthday. It's a whole lot less phony when we return to remembering the man most responsible for launching what's called on the Great Seal of the United States, "Novus Ordo Seclorum", the New Order of the Ages. It's the perfect day to read his Farewell Address, too, although any day is the right day for that, especially during this malAdministration.
Harry and Meghan live in America now let’s make them Monarchs. In all honesty every system has flaws. The UK is about to elect Farage, the AFD are rising in Germany and Israel has been polarized around a prime minister for 30 years. The primary system is clearly a problem. Political parties need to choose their nominees. The President has too much power and Congress too little. We probably need to move to at least four party state.
Since my last name is King and hate both sides of our politics I am happy to serve as a bi partisan host and represent the country with dignity. However, every now and again I have been known to let lose an F Bomb. Most of those times when Trump behaves like a hole he is at heart.
It is tragic that the US ended up as such a strong presidential system, when the founders almost certainly would have preferred a more parliamentary system.
The original intent behind the electoral college and the indirect election of Senators was clearly to create a more parliamentary "representative" system of governance, rather than the direct election of an individual president. The US system quickly morphed into the presidential system we have today, with the idea that we would elect independent "electors" to the electoral college quickly becoming a farce.
As someone originally from a country with a non political Presidents, I think it’s good for performing dignified non-political acts, but it should not be confused with having an actual King. A King can do pomp and circumstance, even though they don’t wield real power. A non political President cannot. It would look ridiculous. The US President can do pomp and circumstance precisely because he wields real power.
This is a topic worth exploring and expanding on further, Matt. Please consider doing so. Further how could be improve the legislature and judiciary. Who has better of organized systems?
"As the sovereign's representative, the governor general carries out the day-to-day constitutional and ceremonial duties of the monarch. The constitutional duties include appointing lieutenant governors, Supreme Court justices, and senators; signing orders-in-council; summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the federal parliament; granting royal assent to bills; calling elections; and signing commissions for officers of the Canadian Armed Forces. The ceremonial duties include delivering the speech from the throne at the state opening of parliament; accepting letters of credence from incoming ambassadors; and distributing honours, decorations, and medals."
Or there very well could have been individual states that would become dominions. I doubt the UK would have wanted the US + Canada as one big subject nation.
Perhaps something along the lines of a semi-parliamentary prime-ministerial system? A directly elected PM, a confidence chamber elected under a majority bonus system, a mutual political suicide pact on motions of no confidence (snap elections immediately upon no confidence). An indirectly elected upper house as a house of review. A ceremonial president elected jointly by both houses. We'll get the stability of a presidential system with some of the flexibility of a parliamentary system, and the separation of the hats of state and government. Another way is the typical semi-presidential system, but I think Matt would be reluctant as it has an independently and directly elected head of state with still having a major political role.
One of the most influential articles (as in, influential to me) I've ever read was by Matt's former colleague Dylan Matthews in Vox, making the case that constitutional monarchy is the best form of government. It really is quite compelling - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/18/17364334/royal-wedding-meghan-markle-prince-harry-england-united-kingdom-monarchy-republic
The UK was a constitutional monarchy after the Restoration. It generally has worked well for the UK, and even Canada and Australia, with some limits.
When Parliament is not in session, someone has to make decisions, like how to respond to an attack. One person can make quick decisions and provide leadership when a body of elected officials might take weeks, so the problem in Canada and the UK has been that PMs have acquired power, as the expense of Parliament. Canada is particularly top down, with no checks and balances other than the courts. The King and Governor-General are little more than figureheads with few powers, but still somewhat vague.
The US courts, and Congress, keep giving more and more power to the President, and the Courts have claimed more and more power too. The Senate is undemocratic.
The House should be the most important body in US politics, but it has let power slip to other branches... and nobody seems able to reverse this.
Dolly Parton for ceremonial non-partisan president!
This is a stunningly sweeping statement considering 250 years of Presidential democracy led to the wealthiest nation in the history of earth, a commanding force for good in the worst conflict our planet has ever seen, and the first and most crucial steps towards exploring the stars.
But yeah, we've had a few years of bad news cycles, so it was probably all a mistake, right?
Extremely off-brand for SB, here.
The key problem I see with our current executive branch arrangement is that there’s no way for the legislative branch to rein them in when they abuse their power outside a traumatic impeachment and removal. The process for removal is so hard, and so dependent on the buy in of the president’s co-partisans who would likely be sacrificing their careers in their support for it, that it’s functionally impossible. Presidents therefore exist in a default state where they can do whatever they want absent judicial pushback (and even respecting judicial pushback is just a norm that hasn’t been broken….yet). Presidents can veto legislation or budget limits that constrain them (and veto overrides require an absurd super majority). Legislative oversight is mostly toothless. Policing Presidential criminality relies on the DOJ who by norm is supposed to be independent but in practice works for the President. The founders thought they were building a system of checks and balances but actually built a system that makes the President a tyrant if they’re willing to be one.
The problem isn't that we get embarrassed if we elect some partisan hack -- it's that the system encourages the election of a partisan hack. And that comes down to the problem that we took a system designed to indirectly select the president and turned it into a direct voting system.
IMO the worst reasoned SCOTUS opinion of all time was Chiaflo which allowed states to bind electors to vote as directed. It's absurd since if a state can bind an elector why can't it bind a senator. Both are federal officials voted in by the people voting on federal issues -- hell we have more evidence about the original intent of the framers re: electors than basically any other issue save trivial things like the age requirements.But as much as I hate Chiaflo I must admit that the original system was dead when we moved to pledged delegates.
However, I want to suggest that maybe Congress could get clever and force states to choose electors say 4 or 8 years before they vote creating at least a strong pressure to people to choose someone who can exercise judgement on their behalf.
The idea that people are going to pick Electors without caring about who they Elect is fundamentally absurd and AFAIK never really happened even before they were formally bound. You can't bind senators because the Senate has to consider an open set of bills, so you can't know what to bind them to. The set of presidential candidates in a given election is both finite and small and people already know which one they want elected.
Maybe it’s absurd but if you read the debates it is completely and obviously what was intended by the founders. You can read debates and look at what was said in the published material — the founding fathers absolutely expected people to select a bunch of individuals who would then cut deals and make choices to pick the right person. I mean if they weren’t intended to make their own decisions the easier and obvious thing to say was simply: each state shall determine how their electoral votes are to be cast rather than saying each state shall choose electors. Remember they (perhaps stupidly) didn’t expect national parties and expected most political tension to be between states — picking individuals who would negotiate on behalf of those states with the other states just as they had done in the continental congress and when drafting the constitution seemed to make perfect sense to them.
And it doesn’t answer the question as to why states couldn’t pass laws saying: each senator running for office must declare their view on treaty X and must vote as per their declaration in the senate. Sure, maybe they could get around it by voting on some similarly named treaty but that’s obviously not something the states are allowed to do.
—-
And no people will never choose electors without considering who they will vote for but the more remote you make that decision and the more things in between they need to react to the more you force people to choose electors they trust to use judgement. I mean look at how the UK parliament works. Sure, at the start they have a leader but usually they change leaders at the behest of the party several times before they go back to the voters.
I suggested voting for electors 4 years before the electors themselves vote but how about making it 8 or 12 or 16. At some point people will prefer to choose someone whose judgement they trust than someone who is bound so far ahead of time to a particular outcome.
For most of our history hasn't the very fact that we didn't want someone as president who would embarrass us feels like it helped encourage the selection of more statesmanlike individuals. And foreign countries know where the power is, if we have PM Trump who is commander in chief it won't reassure our NATO allies the we have a statesman to cut ribbons. The cost of a little embarasment when we do elect someone like Trump seems worth the extra pressure not to do so.
So no I don't buy the idea that convincing the two offices is a bad idea.
What is a bad idea is combining the offices and then choosing the person to fill that office by direct vote by the people. Some form of indirect election of the president would be a good system -- the error the founding fathers made was giving the electoral college no other duties. They should have explicitly made it either congress (a PM with a term), or some combo of say governors (say to contribute the 2 EC votes per state) plus congress.
The Constitution actually leaves the method for selecting electors up to state legislatures. So changes could be made without an amendment to the US Constitution.
I insist on calling today's holiday by its legal name, Washington's Birthday. It's a whole lot less phony when we return to remembering the man most responsible for launching what's called on the Great Seal of the United States, "Novus Ordo Seclorum", the New Order of the Ages. It's the perfect day to read his Farewell Address, too, although any day is the right day for that, especially during this malAdministration.
Harry and Meghan live in America now let’s make them Monarchs. In all honesty every system has flaws. The UK is about to elect Farage, the AFD are rising in Germany and Israel has been polarized around a prime minister for 30 years. The primary system is clearly a problem. Political parties need to choose their nominees. The President has too much power and Congress too little. We probably need to move to at least four party state.
Since my last name is King and hate both sides of our politics I am happy to serve as a bi partisan host and represent the country with dignity. However, every now and again I have been known to let lose an F Bomb. Most of those times when Trump behaves like a hole he is at heart.
It is tragic that the US ended up as such a strong presidential system, when the founders almost certainly would have preferred a more parliamentary system.
The original intent behind the electoral college and the indirect election of Senators was clearly to create a more parliamentary "representative" system of governance, rather than the direct election of an individual president. The US system quickly morphed into the presidential system we have today, with the idea that we would elect independent "electors" to the electoral college quickly becoming a farce.
As someone originally from a country with a non political Presidents, I think it’s good for performing dignified non-political acts, but it should not be confused with having an actual King. A King can do pomp and circumstance, even though they don’t wield real power. A non political President cannot. It would look ridiculous. The US President can do pomp and circumstance precisely because he wields real power.
This is a topic worth exploring and expanding on further, Matt. Please consider doing so. Further how could be improve the legislature and judiciary. Who has better of organized systems?
Who performs this role in Canada? Is it still the monarch of England?
The Governor General represents the Canadian monarch in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada
"As the sovereign's representative, the governor general carries out the day-to-day constitutional and ceremonial duties of the monarch. The constitutional duties include appointing lieutenant governors, Supreme Court justices, and senators; signing orders-in-council; summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the federal parliament; granting royal assent to bills; calling elections; and signing commissions for officers of the Canadian Armed Forces. The ceremonial duties include delivering the speech from the throne at the state opening of parliament; accepting letters of credence from incoming ambassadors; and distributing honours, decorations, and medals."
Thanks. Never heard of this role, which I guess is a point in its favor/favour.
Huge mistake to have broken from Britain. We could be Canada!
Or there very well could have been individual states that would become dominions. I doubt the UK would have wanted the US + Canada as one big subject nation.