this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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I believe we need to abolish the presidency in the near future and distribute the powers to the House and Senate. Powers of government to the House and Powers of State to the Senate, with some fudging for checks and balances, like house passes laws and Senate has to intervene to veto them with some qualified majority rules like the EU has.
I believe this has to be done because it's pretty clear that a system with a single powerful leader inherently puts all the strain and division of the nation into that leader, especially when there's no recourse when public sentiment turns against that leader except for voting them out, if that's even an option to begin with.
A dual-parliamentary system with some restructuring of the House and Senate would go a LONG way in venting a significant amount of the pressure that has built up under our elected leaders as of late.
Also replace the singular supreme court with a sortitionate bench that's drawn randomly for each case that rises to federal jurisdiction to shoot jurisdiction shopping dead.
But who would lead the executive branch then and how would you ensure that they are reasonably separated from the legislative branch?
There would be no independent executive branch, the very concept inevitably endangers democratic systems by creating a person with a lot of power who inherently is going to view any disagreement of course of action from the people's representatives as an obstacle to be gotten around.
Or have you missed all the headlines about the over reliance reliance on executive orders over the past decade and change? Not to mention how the fiat veto was never intended but instead the result of Andrew Jackson just deciding he didn't have to give congress a reason why their laws were being treated with the same energy as shit that was at a minimum arguably unconstitutional up to that point.
The independent executive is a leach that parasitically sucks power away from the elected representatives of the people, and imposes "checks" on their powers that not only are entirely unneeded, but actively endanger the health of the republic.
Everywhere that's tried american style democracy since the US formed has collapsed in dramatic fashion, everywhere else that's gone with a parliamentary system has at worst had periods of endangerment, mostly caused by a parliamentary leader trying to get the powers of an american style president, gestures wildly at Orban and Erdogan
The executive isn't supposed to be wielding power unilaterally. What the president does now, with executive orders and signing statements and line-item veto, is massive overreach.
In a properly functioning democracy, the president delegates authority over most everything to trusted advisors (i.e. head of FCC, or DEA, or what have you) who are placed in that position because they have demonstrated both great political/leadership skills, and appropriate knowledge of the area they are governing. The president still has the final say-so in the form of veto power, but that's pretty much it.
Yeah, and that's not needed when the senate can perform that role just as well and also be a more functioning version of itself for it.
There is no need for a singular focalpoint of elected power.
I would suggest that abolishing it is impractical, however it needs to be reigned in a lot. There are a few circumstances that call for the decisiveness of a strong singular authority, but not many. These "executive orders" have been nuts and shouldn't be such a routine thing.
Might as well start from scratch at that point.