There are two rival spectacles on the television tonight — the State of the Union and the advertisement marathon for people who want to deliver not the next State of the Union, but the one after that. The pageantry is delightful, based on the Constitutional directive that the President “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Then on other stations, I have Bernie Sanders promising to reverse the slide toward political inequality in our country. Hillary Clinton promising to narrow the wage gap. The Republican promise a vast change in the treatment of religious expression in our country.
Back to the State of the Union. Just look at all the gatekeepers in that room. 435 Representatives, whose majority leader can kill an issue simply by refusing to schedule a vote. 100 Senators, 41 of whom can kill an issue due to some procedural tradition called a filibuster. Nine justices, five of whom can throw out any law with no accountability. That doesn’t count for the lobbyist population of Washington, DC, which outnumbers most Massachusetts municipalities. An unelected press who can (and often do) ignore issues into irrelevance.
When teaching the American Constitution to my fifth graders, I often draw on the board two charts. One shows the hurdles an idea has to leap to make it into American law. Below it is a chart of the hurdles and idea has to leap to make it into Canadian (or Australian) law. It isn’t even comparable. The American system has so many more obstacles. Anyone who follows the news of the past ten years can see that easily.
In this day and age, I wonder…how much it does matter who we elect in our billion-dollar contest. Are the Republicans better off controlling state legislatures, blocking legislation in Congress, and forfeiting the Oval Office? I don’t advocate for a Chinese style government, but it seems impossible to get anything done in this country. I wonder why I should believe the claims of Hillary or Bernie, even if offered in dead seriousness and goodwill. Given our system, I don’t know how much it matters who is president….and I don’t know what that says about our system.
Massachusetts with a massive Democratic supermajority should have no trouble passing progressive legislation, yet that happens once in a blue moon around here. Time to try something new and outside of the box locally working to make our legislature more accountable. No reason Massachusetts shouldn’t be a model for the nation in sound, progressive government. No excuse for why it isn’t currently either. Absolutely elect a Democratic president, but let’s start electing real progressives here at home.
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The argument that perhaps it doesn’t matter as much now who is president relies far too strongly on the notion that new federal legislation is the only way “things get done.”
Actually, I’d argue that the American presidency is at its most powerful in history precisely because of congressional gridlock. While it may be boring and under-covered by the media, so much of modern policymaking takes place through agency rule-making — everything from environmental protection, to consumer safety, to corporate reforms, to net neutrality, to health care regulation, etc. etc etc. The executive orders that occasionally get attention (like on immigration) are just the tip of the iceberg, and indeed illustrate how policy can shift through the president’s use of the modern administrative state. The more Congress fails to address persistent problems, the more it frees up the executive to craft innovative alternatives, knowing that the legislature is unlikely to be able to act to block them.
This dynamic is just as true in foreign policy — a field that Congress has essentially abdicated in the era of the modern presidency. So, yes, I would maintain that it matters a great deal who is president, even if we grant that Congress is incapable of enacting any new laws at all (which, if we look at the full length of Obama’s tenure, certainly hasn’t been the case).
The President signs/vetoes bills, sends troops into harm’s way, sets regulatory and enforcement priorities, nominates judges, uses the bully pulpit, etc.
Checks and balances my be a bug or a feature, but they certainly make the presidency important since the woman or man in that seat is one of them.
Presidents can also rally people, stand tough against extremists in government, and articulate a way forward. Modern democrats in that office have chosen split-the-diferenceism–disastrously–but that’s a choice, not a bug in the system. Our party simply has not responded appropriately to intransigence on the right.
The fantasy of the powerful presidency, a liberal mainstay since Kennedy (at least) is not realistic and would be a disaster.
You wonder whether the presidency matters because they do not pass laws with divided government, but Democrats aren’t going to recover the Senate this cycle, and almost certainly cannot recover the House for at least four years and likely many more. If a Republican wins the white house, there will be PLENTY of legislation to pass, and you won’t like any of it much.
Also, it is my belief that a Republican win in this cycle means that many liberal policies/”rights” created by the courts will be undone, as RBG is aging.
And the gridlock will continue under the next President. I have every confidence that Hillary Clinton, even if Bernie is going to win IA and NH, will ultimately prevail in the Democratic contest and be a choice of continuity vs. a choice of extremism on the Republican side. Independents revile Trump and Cruz, and if either of those two win the nomination Hillary will prevail.
She will pick a solid moderate liberal to replace RBG, largely continue the Obama foreign policy while peppering in a more aggressive response to ISIL and all of he domestic proposals will be dead on arrival. She will veto more frequently than Obama, and she won’t waste time trying to be post-partisan or bipartisan and will work towards getting a Democratic majority.
12 years of Democrats and three straight GOP losses will mean they finally nominate someone capable of credibly moving to the middle. I would look at Brian Sandoval (pro-choice, but so will the majority of GOP voters in 2020), Susana Martinez (Spanish for Palin, down to the corruption) and Nikki Haley (the woman to beat, incredibly smart and polished). Ayotte or Portman might run or be shortlisted if they win their Senate races. And it’ll be a hard contest for Hillary to win without significant domestic achievements, ironically, I suspect the Democrats could retake the House and Senate by 2020 so we may have more gridlock after that.
It is this reason why I remain focused on making changes locally. I feel the Bern, but also am now older and wiser and recognize if Obama couldn’t get it done he won’t be able to either. The pragmatist in me knows Hillary will win and knows she will do a decent, but not great, job, largely because of Congressional opposition.
Let’s work on a progressive majority in Massachusetts. That’s where the excitement is for me, and where the greatest potential for progressive policy implementation is.
History is full of example of unexpected things happening. If Trump or Cruz are nominated, they could indeed be the next presidents.
…almost always each have a reasonable chance of winning, which is why I discourage Dem cheerleading for a GOP nominee we see as extreme.
I can see President H. Clinton nominating a liberal to succeed Judge Ginsburg…but will an overt liberal be confirmed by the Senate? And she is a blue seat on the Supreme Court, which is divided almost as neatly as the states of the Electoral College. What is going to happen when Justice Kennedy retires?
I read and find myself agreeing with much of what you say — either president’s domestic policy will be dead on arrival, because our system is such that each side can blame the other for its death.
I’m starting to wish we had a parilamentary system in the US.
I will not be surprised if the Senate just refuses to approve anyone nominated by Clinton for any post, a government shutdown by a thousand cuts.
If Clinton takes that fight to the people we may emerge from it in better shape eventually, but it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
(Note the above is speculation not prediction.)
It should be the policy of the White House to grant temporary recess commissions to any nominee who was not acted upon when the Senate leaves town.
Trudeau’s election has been compared to Obama’s, the difference is he will have a decent chance of passing 90% of his agenda or more because he has a full mandate to govern. Written checks and balances are arguably overrated and contributing to the stalemate we have now. Developed democracies with similar constitutions have fallen prey to the man on the white horse under similar circumstances. Matt Yglesias wrote a good piece on it.
And his colleague Dylan Matthews has pointed out that MPP variations of parliamentary democracy are the most representative and the most stable. It’s also instantly accountable, Prime Minister Bush would’ve been ousted after Katrina either in a leadership contest or a no confidence vote leading to a new election. The flip side is Obama may have lost his mandate, either to an intraparty rival like Hillary or to the GOP. But maybe that’s a good thing? There are some exceptions, Australia’s gone through a lot recently, and the Knesset is less stable for being proportional due to all the damn religious parties. Still, Trudeau gets to do what he wants until the voters tell him otherwise. Far more direct accountability than our system where Obama gets the lionshare of the blame for Congress refusing to do it’s job.
We now effectively require a 60-vote majority to pass anything in the Senate. This is a new “innovation”, and in my view is responsible for a huge portion of our dysfunction.
I’d like to see the Senate restored to a simple majority rule on most matters and see what happens for a decade or so after that before making more invasive changes.
We Democrats were foolish to allow the GOP minority to hamstring the Senate when we were the majority. We should make whatever rules changes are needed to restore a simple majority as the rule of thumb for ordinary Senate business.
He was a shrinking violet, no LBJ or Mansfield. It’s always short term thinking. Reid abused it himself as Minority Leader to block some far right appointees to minor positions and stopped Frist’s sensible proposal to restore majority rule to the Senate. Then, when we were in the majority, he was so fearful of being Minority Leader again, that he refused to consider restoring majority rule to the Senate and killing the filibuster.
Mark my words, the GOP will kill it the second they have a President and enough votes in the Senate. I saw one proposal to have it expire automatically in 5 years when we have no idea who is in control, that might be the best way to get some reform passed. But Reid defended retiring dinosaurs like Levin over the interests of the broader caucus and the voters that elected it. There is still a place for a talking filibuster and lengthly debate, but there is no longer a need for procedural hurdles to passing majority rule backed pieces of legislation.
Hitler and Mussolini (no I’m not triggering Godwin, just making a structural comparison) were both PM equivalents who shoved stuff through without an effective check.
If a GOP POTUS is elected in 2016 and acts the fool, we very well could have a Democratic House in 2018. There are other paths to a blue House majority too of course. For me, the simplest, most direct path to Dem House 18 is that citizens elect an opposition party to their unliked Republican US President.