In US history, and British history before that, abuses of power tend to flow from the executive branch, rather than the legislative. The addition of the veto moves power from a branch which doesn't typically abuse its power to one that does. In addition, the veto makes the process of legislation slower than it might otherwise be, and this slowness is often pointed out as one of the great problems of American democracy.
The most common argument in favor of the veto is that it's a quintessential part of the system of checks and balances, but I don't see any reason for this particular check. It's sometimes said that the president should veto unconstitutional laws. This purpose would be better served by making it easier to sue to invalidate a law on constitutional grounds.
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There has been plenty of congressional corruption over the years.
Major Scandals & Cases (Post-1920s): Abscam (1980s): A major FBI sting caught several congressmen taking bribes to influence legislative action, leading to convictions for figures like Sen. Harrison Williams and Rep. John Jenrette. House Post Office Scandal (Late 1980s/Early 1990s): Involved embezzlement and misuse of funds, ending the career of powerful Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, who served prison time. Iran-Contra Affair (1980s): While primarily executive, it involved congressional oversight failures and secrecy, with some staffers indicted, highlighting subversion of congressional will. Chaka Fattah (D-PA): Indicted for racketeering and misappropriating campaign funds in the 2010s. Bob Menendez (D-NJ): Faced multiple bribery charges related to helping a friend's business interests, resulting in a conviction and removal from Senate leadership. Jim Traficant (D-OH): Convicted of bribery, fraud, and racketeering, he returned to Congress after his conviction, demonstrating persistent defiance. Disciplinary Actions by Congress: Censure: The House censured members like Charles C. Diggs (payroll fraud) and Charles H. Wilson (improper gifts/funds) in the late 70s/early 80s. Expulsion: Though rare, it has occurred for severe misconduct, with some modern examples like George Santos facing expulsion proceedings. Key Themes & Types of Corruption: Bribery & Illegal Gratuities: Taking money or favors for legislative action (Abscam, Menendez). Embezzlement & Misuse of Funds: Stealing campaign funds or public money (Rostenkowski, Fattah). Fraud & False Statements: Lying to investigators or the public (Diggs). Conflicts of Interest: Using office for personal financial gain (Wilson). This history shows corruption in Congress isn't new, evolving from bribery schemes to complex financial and influence-peddling cases, often documented in databases
Congress should be expected to have many more cases of corruption than the presidency because it's made up of 535 people instead of 1.
In all of the cases you mentioned congressional corruption was confined to a single congressman or a small group of congressmen meaning that no more than a few percent of the congressional houses were engaged in a single corrupt scheme at any given time which is nowhere near the 50% majority in each house that would be needed for congress to corruptly exercise its power.
Larger bodies of authority in general tend to be more resilient to corruption because you risk a larger chance of being exposed when you need to convince more people to break the law with you.
Conversely, when the president -as the sole holder of his office- engages in corruption (like accepting pay for play bribes through crypto currency, trying to overthrow the results of a lost election, pardoning his friends or spying on political rivals) he can misuse the entirety of the executive branches power to further these ends without having to convince anyone else to go along with it.
If anything, the possibility of corruption should be another reason not to vest excess power -like the veto power- in the hands of a single person.
This is exactly why checks go both ways congress has a long history of abusing power too concentrating trust in one branch never ends well the veto at least forces friction and slows bad ideas from flying through unchecked
!delta. I thought Congress had a much cleaner record than that.
I think it's worth pointing out that congressional corruption has less direct impact on the government and society as a whole. In normal times you'd probably need atleast 10% of given chamber across both major parties to reliably influence most votes(thats dozens of individuals). The executive branch can basically be entirely captured by just corrupting the president, as the president appoints all the department heads and has a lot of ability to impact things compared to an individual senator or representative.
And besides for actual bribery, it's much easier and more common for a single president to have an ego or agenda and say "I know better", vs hundreds of individuals who represent Americans from specific regions
Not necessarily. If let’s say I was on a committee and I was bribed by the printer ink industry and slip in legislation banning all 3rd party ink. Most of congress wouldn’t care. If it gets my vote on a law they want to pass they will add it in.
Sure, but by your own example this some tiny inconsequential stuff in the big scheme of things.
They have a loooong history of corruption
Much easier to buy a congressman than the president
Edit: I don’t mean that president’s can’t be bought. Just that so many people are trying to, the price goes up. For a Congressman, there’s 435 of them so each would be on average easier and cheaper to buy than the president.
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I didn't say my mind was changed on the title. I was, however, wrong about the prevalence of Congressional corruption.
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The founders couldn’t decide on a form of government that they liked so they mashed three together: monarchy (president), oligarchy (senate) and democracy (house). They never anticipated what the Supreme Court has become.
This proves the issue is not one branch but people abusing power everywhere veto or not corruption finds a way checks help but culture matters more if voters stop rewarding bad actors the system works better over time
Formatting, please, for the love of god.
I ain't reading that brick of text. Looks interesting though.
But abuses of power by the executive is way more impactful than abuses power of the legislative members. The president can just sign an executive order and make it so, but one individual senator or congressperson can not do anything alone.
That's kind of the point of the executive branch. It's also why the president gets so much more press and scrutiny than even the most influential senators.
Well Congress can override a veto with enough votes.
The thing is that it gives a President the power to influence legislation that is not overwhelmingly popular. "I will veto this because..." and it puts pressure on Congress to push the bill in one direction or another. The President should have a say in the general direction this nation takes, and so in cases where Congress cannot get 2/3 of the vote in the House and Senate, it makes sense that the President can have a say. The veto allows the President to have a direct say in legislation, while the override gives Congress the power to go against the President.
I don't see a major issue with this system.
I'm aware of the possibility of overriding a veto.
Why should the President "have a say in the general direction this nation takes"? That's certainly a current feature of the system. I just don't see how it's a desirable one.
The idea behind checks and balances is that groups keep each other in line with reasonable limitations on their power. If a group of rogue congresspeople passed legislation that the president didnt agree with, he vetoes it. That sends it back basically saying to congress to put up or shut up.
Why the president? One good reason is that the president is the only elected person on the national ticket. Hes on every ballot. In a way, he is meant to speak for the voice across the federation of states.
Another is that the executive has the view on implementing the law. Perhaps a veto is issued because a law is so wildly impractical that it cannot be reasonably implemented.
Usually it’s just DC horse trading. But there are very valid reasons to have executive checking congress, all while the judicial holds them to the constitution.
Remember, the goal isnt to create a perfect government. It’s to limit the power of any one government or actor. It’s slow and inefficient by design.
Because they're the leader of the nation. We don't want a king, but we do want a strong figure at the head of our government. A President can use their power and political maneuvering to influence legislation already. So they do have some say without the veto. The veto just gives a more direct and open mechanic for doing so as well.
The President is voted as the single most influential figure in the nation. The voters have said "I trust this person to decide the direction this country will take for the next 4 years." With that in mind, it makes sense for the President to have the veto power in order to have a direct influence over legislation that is not overwhelmingly popular.
If you don't want the President to have a say in the general direction, your issue is not with the veto, but with our system itself. You'd have to change more than just the veto to kneecap a President's say in the general direction this nation takes.
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Saying they're the leader of the nation is a simplification, but it isn't wholly inaccurate. Yes, they lead the executive branch only. But they have immense power to influence the direction this nation takes. In that sense they do lead the nation. No other singular individual has the power or influence that the President has.
Yes, the executive is just one of three presumably equal branches. The difference is that the power of the legislative and judicial branches are not concentrated into one individual. The power of the executive branch pretty much is.
As the single individual with the most power and influence, I don't think it is wrong to call them the leader of the nation. Yes, it is a simplification that does not explicitly detail the power of the other branches. But it is not wholly inaccurate either.
Why have a president at all if you don't think they should "have a say in the general direction this nation takes"?
The president is a national vote unlike either the house or senate which are either regional or statewide votes.
I believe the president whoever that is should have a say in the general direction this country takes. You may not like the current president or the last one but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have a say in the direction the country takes.
How is it possible to have a president who has no say in the general direction the nation takes?
It's a thing in a number of European countries and former British colonies. Basically, what little power the king still had by the time they got rid of him went to the president. Or they copied the homework of someone who did that.
In a lot of those countries the president isn't even elected though, they're appointed by the legislature. And where they are elected, it's usually pretty low profile (except if one of the candidates is particularly controversial, like the recent Romanian election).
Because he should be a powerless functionary merely implementing the will of Congress.
The President enforces the law, he doesn’t make it. His opinion about what the law should be is of no higher weight than any random citizen. If he wants to make law he can run for Congress.
If not, ok, here’s this pile of forms to sign buddy. Enjoy.
Why would we even need a president, then?
Because the nameless bureaucrats who run the federal government need someone to sign their paychecks and run the HR of the government.
Also, the army needs a single commander, at specific times that Congress deems military force is needed.
It is possible to have a president with no influence over legislation but still wields significant authority in how laws are inacted or enforced. See: executive order
I wouldn't consider ruling by executive order to be "having no influence in the general direction the nation takes".
They are the captain of the ship called the United States of America. Why should the captain have a say in the direction the country takes? Weren't they voted in based on their vision afterall by the people?
Because Presidents are elected to steer the nation in the general direction they campaigned on.
They might be, by people who don’t understand the Constitution. Congress steers. The President just shovels coal into the engine.
Yes and when one party holds all of Congress, the President's agenda gets steered the way the wants much more often than during a disputed Congres.
Only if Congress passes appropriate laws.
I don’t think the President should have any say. He is a functionary and a bureaucrat only, and ideally his decision making power should approach zero.
“The President of the USA? What was his name again?” Should be a common refrain.
The present situation strongly illustrates my point.
This seems like you would prefer a Parliamentary System where the chief executive (Prime Minister) is the head of the legislature and serves only with the confidence of the legislature. Though, I'm pretty sure the UK Prime Minister is still more powerful than your imagined President.
Sounds like a plan to me. Allow Congress to remove the President with 50%+1. Even better, allow any 40% minority of Congress to remove any Cabinet official.
Oh God, that is a horrible idea. Nobody would keep their job for more than a month if we did that.
They would… if the President always nominated cabinet members broadly acceptable to a vast majority of Congress.
There isn't a single person on this planet who could run a government agency in a manner acceptable to the vast majority of congress for more than a few weeks.
Sounds like the government shouldn’t do much then. If you don’t have broad consensus why be empowered to do anything?
I’m a huge proponent of small government limited by the direct power of the people but in a country like America, especially today’s consensus, you’ll never get a broad consensus, even on small issues. You’ll basically grid lock the government on small issues like cabinet members when there are larger issues the federal government should handle. We are already slow by design, adding in such a requirement like a 40% minority vote on cabinet members would be nonsensical.
At that point, why even have a President at all? If people don't even know their name, seems like their title shouldn't even be President.
Not really. If we do away with the President, we still have to have a system that prevents Trump-like people from attaining whatever positions we do give the power to run our country. Doing away with the President does not necessarily do away with overreach or corruption.
Back in 1789, "President" was the simple and unadorned title. John Adams complained that it suggested the head of a fire department or sports club, not a nation.
And now it is commonly understood to mean leader of a nation. Words change. If we're going to change our government to make the President some nameless functionary, they shouldn't keep the title President.
But it still refers to unimportant offices. Sports clubs still have presidents. As a more direct point of comparison, the German president is a nameless functionary.
No it doesn't. Unimportant in the context of an organization's value to the world, but not unimportant in the context of that organization's command structure. A sports club's president is often the most important person in that club. The leader of that organization. So the word tends to mean the leader or most important role in an organization these days. Be it a political, recreational, or business organization.
Okay, but that leads me to one of my earlier arguments. Your issue isn't with the veto, but with the entire system as it stands today. Doing away with the veto won't make the President a nameless functionary. That would require major systemic overhaul.
The purpose of the constitution is not to make a perfect government which never fails. The purpose of the constitution is provide limitations on the three branches so that if any of them do become malicious or flawed, their damage is limited until the next election when they can be replaced. From that perspective, the document would rather make it too hard than too easy to pass laws, and, if the people believe that any politician is unreasonably slowing down the process, they and their party will be punished.
And, if you believe that the voters are incapable of accurately punishing stonewalling politicians, then democracy is too fundamentally flawed for a specific veto provision to be the most important problem.
This.
OP, if you don't see any reason for this check, what check WOULD you propose that the executive would have over the legislature? Because the system of checks and balances is kind of designed so that *each* branch has checks over both of the other two branches.
The President has several other checks over the legislature. Since the executive branch is so much faster moving than the other two, it can often simply move faster than the other branches can react. By necessity, Congress doesn't spell everything out in every law. As a practical matter, this makes executive orders incredibly powerful, and counteracting them would still require remarkable Congressional unity even if the President couldn't veto. The appointment power and ineligibility clause also acts as checks here; without it, congress would install it's own people in positions of executive power; we'd have ministers, rather than executive-based department heads.
I don't take a position on whether these other checks are a good thing, but it seems worth noting how constrained Congress is compared to parliaments.
This is just an inbuilt problem of multiparty democracy. The US is seeing right now what happens when both the executive and legislative are captured by a party led by a corrupt, morally bankrupt stooge. The only way to fix something like this is to have a constitution which makes its explicit purpose to ensure the right to health, housing, jobs, and general welfare of the common population. Would probably be more easily achieved in a one party state led by a leftist party with a strong central executive committee that is checked by several increasingly large elected bodies from which the central executive is elected from.
Some electoral reform would also go a long way towards making this problem less likely. The US has a system that is almost tailor made to produce a two party system, where voters have only have two direct options unless they want to spend even more time and effort on influencing intra-party politics.
Governments that use various forms of proportional representation and ranked choice voting lead to a larger number of options for voters to choose from, and require those parties to more readily work with each other to achieve a majority coalition rather than simply being able to seize full control of multiple branches of government.
In such a system, it can be harder for one malicious party to seize power, because voters have more alternatives, they aren’t forced to merely vote against a single party they just can’t stand.
Even in other multiparty democracies we're seeing neoliberal capture of positions of power and the governments are being run just for the sake of the continuity of the power system. I think a total constitutional overhaul is what is really necessary to guarantee the survival of democracy. Guaranteeing that the most important thing is the health, welfare, employment, etc. of the common people, require parties that form to put the same in their party documents, make politicians sign a pledge affirming they will carry out their duties as such with a 25 year prison sentence for those that violate it.
It’s hard to write mandates for health, welfare, and employment with enough specificity that it can be realistically enforced, and not abused by the party in power to simply accuse their opponents of failing to support the people’s welfare and throw them in prison.
And the current US administration is pretty openly trampling over the law, and nobody can hold them accountable. I’m not sure how introducing more particularly vague legal obligations would change the situation?
Other multiparty democracies are… doing fine? I mean, we don’t live in a utopia yet, Brexit was really weird, but they mostly don’t seem like they’re on the verge of collapse or anything.
In almost all the multiparty democracies a vast multitude of people are suffering in an economy that was built on extraction of resources from the global South, and extracting wealth from the bottom to transfer it to the top. Constitutional law experts could indeed write a document with enough specificity to guarantee enforcement, and that's also why I think a one party left wing state would be the answer. People can vote along the spectrum from socialist right to socialist left, there're plenty of moderate socialist parties that show there's a multitude of choices on that spectrum.
The current system will eventually collapse in on itself because even the poor in the West are used to a certain standard of living and a chance for economic mobility, and that is being robbed from everyone before our very eyes.
Uhh... what?
I'm an independent who leans liberal or even left on most issues, but "the solution is the have a one party system run by a party who agrees with me" seems like a very difficult take to convince a majority of people to sign on to. Or at least I'm assuming you are a leftist... as it would be pretty weird for a non-leftist to propose a one party leftist run system.
Isn't another clear alternative to change the voting rules to allow for more parties? If there were 7 major parties for example, it would be much more difficult to have a situation like Trump has now, where checks and balances are destroyed, because the other branches are controlled by the same party as the president.
(though I still support having a president over a parlimentary coalition government... as I think those create a sort of two party system-lite).
Are you proposing Soviet government?
Not specifically, you'd need a more moral society than the US to make what I envision possible. And it would be much more democratic than the Soviet system, having elections where the government matches small dollar donations that are capped at a certain amount depending on the body you're running for. I take more inspiration from the Chinese system where they have elected bodies going from ~2.7 million people down to the unelected politburo but it would be democratic all the way to the chairmanship.
Wanting to have multiple parties for the sake of democracy is really just window dressing. The US is probably one of the most disenfranchised countries in the world, no matter how you vote, the billionaires and corporations that donate billions to the parties are the ones that win.
People don't vote in China.
Like, I don't know what it is supposed to be on paper, but I have family in China (Beijing and Shandong) and they never vote. Universal suffrage is not a thing.
That's why I said like the Chinese system. China is an authoritarian regime, idk if there's any country with citizens that could pull off what I envision because most people are naturally too greedy to care about their fellow citizens.
I'm just confused why you describe the Chinese system as "they have elected bodies going from ~2.7 million people down to the unelected politburo but it would be democratic all the way to the chairmanship." when the average Chinese citizen doesn't take part in elections (or even has the opportunity to do so). How is that democratic?
https://progressive.international/blueprint/cb7dbaf4-b106-4105-8bde-fdab4bfc2fe8-building-whole-process-peoples-democracy-in-china/en
This is what I'm talking about basically. It's the Chinese system of how they use their cadres in consultation with the people. Obviously this doesn't happen all the time but the example described would be what you would want for everything.
It's a completely authoritarian idea. What if the majority of people want a right-wing government? You'd be ignoring the people's wishes to impose your ideology. Imagine someone proposes the same idea as you, but with a right-wing party—would you agree?
Nope, because right wing governments typically come with in group/out group ideology built around one group being the privileged class and the rest being exploited. That's my whole point, and it's also one of the failings of multiparty democracy. You get the illusion of choice that applies a thin veneer to cover the fact that we are living in a country that is run by billionaires and corporations.
The whole point of a good / robust system is that it should require as little good faith as possible from the participants. That it should produce good results (or at least somewhat decent results) even from selfish actors.
For example, my memory is that Finland doesn't allow for private schools. So even if the wealthy in Finland were morally crappy, they would still want to have good private schools for everybody, because that's the only way for their OWN children to get good schooling. (though obviously it's more complicated than that, because you would also need to make sure they can't just get that law changed. That's a specific policy, and we are talking more about the bigger picture of governmental systems. But that's just an example).
That's in theory how voting is supposed to work. Even if a politician was a selfish piece of shit, they are supposed to be motivated to produce good results for their constituents just as a way to get re-elected. The problem though is the US voting system is deeply flawed in a number of fundamental ways... so it doesn't always work out like that in practice.
Veto?
Sorry?
You asked what check the executive would have over the legislative without the pardon. Wouldn't they still have the veto power, which is their primary check against the legislative?
This was about the veto, not pardons.
And that's a bad system I'd argue because it just displaces the problems. I don't understand what their logic was. These checks just give power to another branch which can abuse it all the same. Presidential pardons are generally regarded to have mostly been abused to pardon allies, family and friends, judicial review puts the political leanings of the justices in display and so forth.
Many countires lack them and they work better. So many countries operate on a system of parliamentary sovereignty where the legislative is above the other two branches and can dismiss and appoint its members as it sees fit. In many countries it is not even bound by the constitution because it has the vested power to rewrite the constitution as well as interpret of itself whether laws are constitutional. People from the U.S.A. then often ask “So who keeps them in check?”, and to that I respond “Who keeps who keeps them in check in check”?
Ultimately, the system relies on the voters not voting for terrible, corrupt people but that's no different in the U.S.A. except it's all indirect and it relies on parties not appointing corrupt supreme court justices, except... they of course all when having the chance appoint the biggest, most corrupt, most partial advocate for their cause they can find.
I also do not understand why justices would serve for life. I certainly understand that once appointed they can't be dismissed, but why not just say they're appointed for 10 years and during that time they cannot be dismissed?
The idea of justices serving for life is so they don't need favors from anyone. I'm not disagreeing or agreeing but this is why:
Say I'm a federal judge. I get appointed at 40, and spend 10 years making decisive, principled, anti-corporate rulings. My term ends, and I've pissed off all the big law firms and corporations who I ruled against in the last decade. Now, I can't find work. On the other hand, my judge colleague who's had informal job offers lined up from the beginning of her term spends her 10 years helping those people who want to hire her. After her term, she takes a cushy consulting job for $300k.
There are solutions, but that's the idea. Lifetime appointments mean they're beholden to no one (in theory)
Well duh. The alternative is having a Chinese system where votes don't matter at all and everyone just has faith the uniparty will take care of them and act appropriately. You want a democracy, republic, etc you have to put faith in voters regardless.
To avoid what we see in congress, the revolving door of lobbyists. You want justices who cannot be swayed by the promise of a sweet $1-5M a year or more gig upon retiring should they make the right group happy. Also prevents justices from worrying about elections. Don't want to piss off the electorate with a decision that is good law but unpopular if next year 3 justices are getting replaced by whoever wins. Easy to see the many different pressures that could arise.
minor correction, in parliamentary systems the judiciary is above all, but legislative is definitely above executive
Not every parliamentary system has a concept of parliamentary sovereignty. However those that do as a rule have a system codified that the courts cannot challenge the parliament or rule over whether laws are constitutional or not. German is parliamentary, but is not a parliamentary sovereign state. In the Netherlands, the parliament is supreme over all and the law is in inviolate and courts are not empowered to set aside the law or rule that it is unconstitutional.
oh shit
that seems... just mildly problematic
I disagree. People living in countries with judicial review are often raised with a lot of propaganda that it's a good thing and that supposedly the courts are the guardians against a wanton legislative. In reality, it's the opposite and courts constantly misuse this power to just push their own personal political ideas. Especially in the U.S.A. it's a circus and a joke how much the justices transparently try to find a reason to declare things they don't like ”unconstitutional” with it being clear what each of them will rule on hot button political issues with their political leanings being open and notorious.
Why doesn't bicameralism solve the problem you're referring to here? If one house of congress becomes "malicious or flawed" doesn't the other limit the damage?
The point of a constitution is to have multiple checks, not just put all their eggs in one basket. When a hundred million lives are on the line, just having a single check (in this case, the bicameral legislature) isn't going to cut it for the entirety of a country's existence. In addition, there is the advantage of having different types of stopgaps. The problem with just having the legislature watch its own back is that there are five hundred senators and house members, so it can be hard to punish any individual for just going along with the group. However, the president faces more individual responsibility and can be more easily swayed by voters.
This is likely why senators were originally appointed by state governments instead of direct elections
The senate was supposed to represent the interests of the states themselves, not of the people therein. That was the province of the house.
Are you proposing rolling back the 17th amendment?
Not proposing as there seems to be no appetite for such a decision. But I wouldn't oppose it. It could make state politics more interesting, at least
The problem it created was that state elections just became about how senators would be appointed, causing state issues to be ignored in favor of national issues. It’s bad enough under the current system where everyone in the country is obsessed with elections in other states and everything is about whether a given candidate supports some national policy. I’m a dog catcher, I don’t have much influence on the national deficit or Israel.
Also, state governments getting deadlocked and leaving senate seats open for months or occasionally years was one of the other reasons the 17th was passed.
Plus, while people love to complain about gerrymandering for the House of Representatives (which is a concern, don't get me wrong), it largely balances out as different states do it to benefit different sides. On the state legislative level, the problem is far, far worse- there are states that while being highly competitive in statewide races, the only question about the legislature is if the majority party gets a veto-proof majority or not next year (looking at you, North Carolina and Nevada, and pre-2024 Wisconsin). A lot of state legislatures are also less transparent than the federal government, too. With the exception of not having hideously malapportioned upper houses (yes I know that's the point of the Senate, but it's still objectively distorting the will of the people to a huge degree whether you think that's a good thing or not), a lot of state governments are less democratic than the feds. We need to fix a lot of things before we can even discuss giving state legislatures control over the Senate.
Tbh we should probably just scrap the Senate in its entirety, although that's basically impossible legally and politically speaking.
Dog catcher is an elected position?
Not in most places at least, but it's a common expression. "So and so isn't qualified to run for town dog catcher" and the like.
Weirdly enough, county coroners are elected in a shocking amount of the country.
For the love of this country, absolutely. We currently have everything, but the supreme court being selected by the dumbest people you went to high school with
I concur with rolling back the 17th amendment. Return the senate to its original form.
We need better viable candidates.
I am. 3 of the 4 progressive era amendments were really bad ideas. One has already been overturned. Women can keep the right to vote, but the other two need to go also.
Yes
But there also wasn't supposed to be a two-party system. That throws a wrench into all of the original intentions.
Read Federalist # 10. They absolutely knew that factionalism would emerge. Did they know it would be specifically a 2 party system? Maybe not, but they 100% knew that rival political factions would disagree.
Rival political factions are a given, but a two-party split dominating politics is not. We could have developed a multi-party system instead.
For what they knew at the time, maybe. Objectively, Duverger’s Law is pretty strong though.
Clearly that's an issue of FPTP. And even then, Britain somehow manages to have multiple parties with political relevance.
Britain is currently in the middle of a realignment, in a decade or two things will probably settle down into a situation where there's two major parties and a handful of regionally relevant ones like has been the case for most of its history.
It's also worth noting that British elections are usually hugely disproportional (see: "landslide" elections usually seeing majority party voteshares in the low 40s, or 33% in the case of Starmer).
America has supported more parties in the past, from the 1890s to the 1940s it wasn't uncommon to see 3-5 parties holding seats in Congress even if only the big ones got more than a handful, but a) most of the minor parties that won were in areas where the other major party had basically no infrastructure or support base, so a third party became the main opposition. Truly three-way elections where anyone has a legit shot to win are pretty rare, and b) the ones that lasted more than a decade or so usually got absorbed by the other major party.
Are you arguing that because we have devolved to 2 parties, therefore any intentions of the founders in relation to the purpose of the senate are irrelevant? How does that logic work?
I didn't say it was irrelevant. I'm saying that the two party system skews the original intentions, and that's something that should be taken into account.
Because they were originally set up to separate the senators from the voters. The second they handed direct election of Senators to the equation, the process is now flawed more than it was ever meant to be.
I argue the flaw exists in the execution of duties.
The execution has become less about collaboration, mutual respect, and consideration. It has become super polarized with hatred.
Any alternative party is effectively locked out of debates so we can’t hear better ideas.
This might be a weird suggestion, because I don't think any other votes work this way... but I think pardons should have to be approved by congress, BUT only like 35% or 40% of congress or something like that. So it's still primarily an executive branch power... and you don't need congress to agree... but it hopefully keeps a president from abusing it too much. Because if you can't even get a pretty decent chunk of your own party willing to attach their names to the pardon, then maybe it's a sketchy pardon.
Of course, if I were making changes to the US system, I would dramatically overhaul the entire thing and create a multiparty system... but that's a different and bigger issue.
After reading a couple of your responses, I want to ask what you think the fundamental role of the President and the Executive branch should be, and why you think that?
That's a good question. I think the most important job of the President should be to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". Putting it more bluntly, I think the President should largely do whatever Congress wants. The main reason I think this is that there seems to be a pretty strong historical relationship between expansion of executive power, reduction in legislative power, tyranny.
Given that the only job is to execute the laws that congress passes, do you believe that even needs to be an elected position?
Framing it another way, it seems like the check the Executive has against the Legislative is that they can say "No, I don't think I'll be doing that", which is different from the Judicial's check of saying "That's unconstitutional, you can't do that".
What, if any, check on the Legislative do you think the Executive should properly have?
And the point there is that expansion of Executive power is only one way to Tyranny. We can get there through expansion of power through either of the other two branches as well. That's the whole idea behind each branch having a check against both others. Overridable to be sure, but there.
It would probably also be better if the president served at the pleasure of Congress. Sorry for burying the lead there, but I walked in here thinking that was an unrelated question.
You're, of course, correct that it's a different kind of check than the Judicial one. I don't see your point, though.
I don't know whether there should be any at all, but it seems like this one in particular is deleterious.
Do you have any historical examples of tyranny coming from somewhere either the legislative or judicial branches?
Judicial impeachments by Congress, civil rights enforcement by the federal government, Reconstruction by Congress all are historical remedies to legislative and judicial “tyranny”.
!delta. I believe you're alluding to Jim-Crow, which would be an example of legislature-lead tyranny.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/SECDUI (6∆).
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Are you willing to accept that legislation passed through congress (or another legislative body) can actually be tyrannical? Or are you just going to dismiss concerns because those laws were passed democratically
This is exactly the system the Founders wanted to avoid. They purposely avoided a Parliamentary system because they wanted the President to be a check on Congress.
OP disagrees with the Founders, that’s the discussion. Saying that they disagree with OP is not going to convince OP.
If you read the records of the Constitutional convention, the original proposal for the office of the President was that they be nothing more than a executive functionary that carries out the will of the Congress. The promptly tossed that idea as poorly thought out.
"The main reason I think this is that there seems to be a pretty strong historical relationship between expansion of executive power, reduction in legislative power, tyranny."
There is no doubt that this it true. But I'd point out that those powers weren't taken by the Executive. The Congress has repeatedly ceded it's power by granting it to the executive.
What’s the point of the president then??
According to the constitution, the presidents job is to speedily carry out the will of Congress.
He was supposed to be a tiebreaker between states, and an international face. Thats why there is the EC. He’s supposed to be the tiebreaker between states, that’s why the states vote for president isn’t a popular vote, the populous states would always win.
Governors were supposed to do what the president does now. They were supposed to be who controlled the state because what does someone from New York know about living in Florida. We were supposed to be 50 states all separate but united.
And it was really smart too. We made the single most powerful guy, basically not have any power except for vetoing. This means when the governor was dirty there was a guy above them and the president can coordinate the other states militias to overpower him.
Now we’ve given the powerful guy all the power and it’s damn near impossible to take it away.
Probably not the best example given how many Floridians used to be New Yorkers lol.
The Roman Empire had one of the most corrupt and powerful legislation branches in history.
Slow legislation isn’t a bad thing. Accurate and proactive legislation is better.
It’s a lot harder to change/remove a law than to pass a law
Do you have a good source on that? I was under the impression that the tyranny of the Roman empire was, at least in large part, due to the Senate losing its power as compared to the Emperor.
https://www.studentsofhistory.com/the-decline-of-the-roman-republic
This is a solid overview, but it's such a complex story I really do recommend a book such as Edward Gibbons The Decline and Fall. Long story short, the senate chose the emperor of Rome and eventually became made up of wealthy, powerful individuals. Similar to today in the USA lol.
Then what's the President for then? If a 268-to 267 vote can pass anything they want what's the point of an Executive branch at all?
In addition to the executive powers of the president, they're the head of state of the United States. In plenty of other countries, being head of state is a full time job. Take, for instance, the Australian and Canadian governors general.
Yeah. And a toothless one at that if they just have to eat whatever shit sandwich Congress gives them.
Heads of state generally are toothless. In plenty of other countries, an even greater degree of toothlessness in the head of state is seen as a feature. You won't hear Canadians or Australians arguing that their governors general should have more power.
Governors general are entirely unelected, not the same thing.
This is a poor argument against the veto because the executive branch's sole purpose is not just to force legislation to be overwhelmingly popular in order to become law.
The executive overseas the function and operation of government as outlined by the laws and budgetary constraints of Congress and within the bounds of established law as ruled by the courts esp the Supreme Court.
The veto is just one check against Congress given to the President by the constitutional framers.
Not its sole purpose, but an extremely important one.
To execute the law. The Executive is in charge of the cabinet. That's a lot of power right there, even without the veto.
The majority can just explicitly lay out what it wants the cabinet to do (or, hell, just not approve anybody and run the executive branch by fiat). That's basically zero power. Trump is laying bare how easily US elections can be manipulated and you couldn't be incentivizing them more by putting so much power in the hands of the legislature.
In theory maybe, in practice there are 535 members of congress with their own jobs to do and millions of federal employees, so they really can only give priorities, funds, and guidelines. Which they do already, all the time, sometimes at extreme level of specifics, via legislation.
And the executive without the veto would still have immense latitude in day to day affairs, particularly foreign affairs. (Personally I would be super happy if there was an elected office just for international affairs and military, but that’s neither here nor there.)
But this feeds into what I said below - the current issues aren't because of the Presidental the veto it's the dysfunctional, unrepresentative legislature. I mean if anyone was to make a list of changes to improve US government where would removing the Presidential veto power be in that list? For me it wouldn't make top ten.
Are you saying you'd expect legislative elections to be easier to rig than presidential elections? Why?
Let me introduce you to my friend Gerald Mandering, we call him Jerry for short.
Also, it's just a lot easier to do enough fraud to swing a result if there's a few hundred thousand votes vs over a hundred million. Our election systems are quite secure, regardless of what certain political figures or internet commenters butthurt about the most recent result might say, so I don't think that's much of an argument against anything, but it's mathematically just easier to significantly impact the results of an election with fewer votes cast, which legislative races inherently have compared to national ones.
Not saying easier, but at least gerrymandering can somewhat be ameliorated by having your guy in the Presidency, so even if they retake congress in the mid-terms you still have a guy in the fight. But if they're able to just keep passing whatever they want then it no longer really matters and the reward for doing so ends up even higher.
Management and secretarial work, which does not sound that bad right now.
In 2015 Pres. Obama vetoed a bill which would have significantly hurt union organizing and worker's rights in the US. That's just one recent example of the use of the veto in the US that many on Reddit would have hated should it have passed.
There are certainly cases where bad bills have been vetod. Is there reason to believe they outweigh the cases where good bills have been vetoed?
That's the thing: a truly good bill can bypass a bad veto. Has happened many, many times.
That's why the veto is good: a slim majority that is trying to ram through bad bills can be kept at bay. Good bills that need to get through still make it through. It's the middle of the ground cases that don't have overwhelming support that you're pointing to as problems.
That's democracy: you need to get almost everyone on board or it isn't going to happen.
The 1974 FOIA bill was vetoed by Gerald Ford but in the wake of Watergate people didn't like the lack of government transparency, so support was there for Congress to override the veto.
The civil rights restoration act of 1987, which requires all institutions that receive fed money adhere with all fed civil rights laws, was vetoed by Reagan. It was overrode overwhelmingly.
The veto isn't the problem, it's that Congress doesn't represent your personal political will as a majority. If the GOP keeps the Congress and we get a D in the White House next you'll be thanking your lucky stars that the executive branch has the veto.
The abuse of power has been by Congress via independent agencies.
Per the Constitution there are three separate branches with separate powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers.
Congress has abused its power by creating independent branches accountable to them and not the President. This gives Congress both legislative powers and unconstitutional executive power.
What we are seeing today is not a tyrannical President. You are seeing the executive and judicial branches using checks and balances to restore executive power to the executive branch.
Doesn't the appointment power make independent agencies more accountable to the President than to Congress?
No, independent agencies are independent of the President. Congress creates them and then holds them accountable.
Independent agencies exercise executive power, but the leader of the executive branch (President) isn’t their boss.
This has led to the increase of executive orders over the last few decades. The more layers of executive bureaucrats Congress creates, the more the President loses the ability to do anything. Presidential power is at a historic weak point.
Compared to the great majority of American history where few of these administrative bodies existed and federal laws were much more limited, that conclusion seems... dubious. The history of the past few hundred years has been increasing consolidation of power in the Executive, reducing the power of Congress but also the States. This accelerated under Obama as the legislature became too partisan to perform its function and the gravity of (de facto) legislation passed to the Presidency and the Courts.
Increased power of the executive branch controlled by Congress, not the President. That’s the unconstitutional part.
That's certainly one theory. That's not been the prevailing view since Nixon. Guess we'll see what wins out. At the highest level, the only thing that matters is what you can get away with. As Trump has proved again and again.
In terms of policy, it doesn't seem crazy to me that some functions of government should be insulated from political changes. We had a broad consensus on policy that lasted for decades and across administrations before the era of hyper-partisanship and that seemed to work pretty well. That means that the entire government probably shouldn't do a 180 every 4 to 8 years. Which you can say is undemocratic, and I would agree.
But with the filibuster does it even matter? If it were 50% to pass a bill it might make more sense to require a bigger majority to override a disagreeing president. As it is you basically need a veto proof majority to do anything.
There's no filibuster in the House.
The veto isn’t really even just for checking the legislature. The executive executes laws, the veto just lets the president formally say the aren’t gonna be executing a law that is bad
If it were the case that "the veto just lets the president formally say the aren’t gonna be executing a law that is bad", wouldn't we expect Presidents to be able to retroactively veto laws?
Through executive orders the president does this, same with the pardon. An example would be Biden pardoning a large number of people with possession of weed charges and his executive orders around that
The executive branch should need a better reason to veto laws than 'one guy felt like it'
I don't think that the Presidential veto ability is in the top 5 list of problems with the design of the US government. The fundamental problem imo is the dysfunction of the legislature (Congress) not the executive or judicial branches. And the dysfunction of Congress is more because that branch is supposed to be representative of the political will of the US people and it very clearly is not.
Don't get me wrong, there are some powers we should remove from the President, eg the ability to pardon people has been thoroughly abused by Trump.
Imo the Senate is the biggest problem. It's way too easy to jam up the "usual" way to do things, which leads to executive orders and judicial rulings being by far the most effective way to get what you want. Ideally, if the courts make a bad ruling, you get Congress to amend the law in question. But with how hard getting anything through the Senate is, the Supreme Court ends up as effectively a third legislative chamber, even more powerful than the other two, but this time unaccountable in any meaningful way (yes judicial impeachment is a thing but c'mon if passing a law is too hard, impeachment basically requires divine intervention). That strongly incentivises "stacking the court" with biased judges, as that's the best way to get long-term policy wins. The ineffectual Congress is also why executive orders, despite being easily removed by the next president, are so relied on.
The House is plenty dysfunctional in its own ways, but the Senate is the obvious bottleneck preventing stuff from happening.
Absolutely. The design of the Senate is the number one failing in the design of US government. Only two senators per state and elected separately results in the poorest quality of representation of any democratic chamber currently in existence. It means that if your State is 51% in favor of a particular party then that party gets both senators. Awful design.
Although in the "defence" of the Founding Fathers they never meant it to be a representative chamber, more like a kinda House of Lords where Senators were appointed by the professional political class. When the 17th amendment was passed they should have increased the number of Senators per state (based on an overall per capita calculation) and have half of them elected each time.
Depends on how you define "quality". If you mean the least representative of the populace (and exclude entirely unelected bodies like the Canadian Senate or even worse, the British House of Lords), the Seanad of Ireland is at least a contender.
There's 60 senators.
-11 are appointed by the Taoiseach (prime minister)
-3 are elected by Dublin University alumni
-3 are elected by National University of Ireland alumni
-43 are elected from "vocational panels" by TDs (MPs), outgoing senators, and local government officials. The panels are made of lists half written by sitting TDs and senators and half written by nominating bodies, which are organizations that have some sort of connection to the field in question- anything from business associations to labor unions to government agencies.
Or at least I think that's what's going on, it's incredibly confusing.
And because all members of city or county councils get to vote, an area's voting power is entirely dependent on the size of their Iocal council- so it can be hugely malapportioned (although Ireland did resize local councils to be somewhat proportional to population in 2014 so it's not hugely malapportioned now, but it was before then).
The only good thing is that, like the House of Lords it was based on, it can't stonewall legislation like the US Senate can. But as far as electoral systems go, I think it's the worst one I've heard of.
Yeah, I am willing to admit there may have some exaggeration there - may should have said "lowest 3".
But it's important to point out that the Irish Parliament (upper and lower) elects members using an Proportional RCV method (STV) which considerably raises the representativeness of the elected officals. That method is another of the more vital improvements that the US legislature needs before we start considering changing the veto.
You do realize that the veto power has a check and balance itself? Get enough votes, and the legislative branch can already override a veto.
Governing is not supposed to be easy or fast moving. Slow and difficult is a feature, not a bug.
And that is why executive powers always expand. There are many circumstances where the system needs to be efficient or people die.
Yes. Our system was revolutionary for the 18th century, good for the 19th, adequate for the 20th, and is creaking and showing its age in the 21st.
Congress can override the veto in cases where it’s being abused. I feel like that alone undermines the idea that the veto allows the presidency to abuse their power.
Most cases where the veto is used is because of political differences, not an abuse of power. If it was an abuse of power then congress would simply override it or impeach. If they don’t do that then the law simply does not have enough political support and they should negotiate a more popular law between each other and the president.
The slowness is a feature not a bug. We can certainly debate the merits of having a slow legislative process but I feel like bringing that up misses the point.
Logically it does make some sense…the executive is ultimately who has to enforce and execute these laws, it makes sense they would have a say. There are a lot of problems with US government and the constitution but I don’t think the veto power is one of them. Currently the biggest problem is the apparent belief that the president is not obligated to follow the laws, spend the budget, or staff the agencies that congress creates…making your issue with the veto rather moot.
I’d challenge the idea that presidential vetoes aren’t really a significant source of deadlock. I don’t think taking away the only legislative check the president has is going to help very much.
A far bigger issue IMO is the house majority leader’s ability to prevent votes from happening. Many bills could pass with the minority party plus a handful of dissenting members of the majority party, but the majority leader has the ability to prevent a vote from even happening.
The Senate has way more stalling options than the House, including ones available to the minority party.
The Founders were none too happy with Parliament - whom the Founders were well aware to actually be responsible for the offenses they charged against the King.
The British system was one of increasing aggregation of power in the hands of Parliament - and the Founders explicitly wanted to knock the legislature down a peg....
The US government was meant to be deliberative and biased AGAINST action..
They wanted gridlock, and they built a government that delivered it...
“British history before that”
Britain doesn’t have an executive or legislative branch. The historical foundation you’re using doesn’t work. Even when the monarch historically did thing, the British version of the “legislative branch” still had an equivalent of the president (prime minister)
The legislative branch is extremely corrupt. What are you talking about?
But diffuse
I don't agree that the veto should be removed entirely, but I do think it should be reformed in a specific way. I think the veto should be eliminated for congressional recision of power. What do I mean by this?
Let's say Congress in 1970 passes a law saying "the President can do X". Skip forward 50 years and we have a new President and new Congress. The president is abusing the power that Congress gave him 50 years ago (perhaps by unilaterally passing tariffs?). Well, if Congress wanted to do something about it, they'd have to pass a law, rescinding that power, but that law can and will be vetoed by the President. This makes it nearly impossible for Congress to ever claw back their power from an abusive President.
If you listened to the oral arguments about the tariff case, Justice Gorsuch was making similar arguments in that it seems rather difficult for Congress to ever tell a President "no" and reclaim their Article 1 powers.
Congress tried getting around this through the implementation of legislative vetos, but the case of INS v Chadha said that isn't constitutional.
I think the current veto power incentivizes ever increasing power in the executive and hamstrings the current Congress based off of previous Congresses.
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It's worth noting that political parties as we understand them today really didn't exist when the Constitution was being written. Sure, there were some factions who had similar goals, but it wasn't anything like the modern apparatus where groups struggle for social and financial clout and make it a point to kill legislation that makes the other team look good. Today, the two parties serve as checks on each other, and that outcome wasn't necessarily foreseen at the time.
Instead, it looked the legislature would be small body of elites that could decide on issues in a reasonable manner, and it would be very easy for them to start passing legislation with their closest allies in a majority to serve their own interests. Thus, the veto made sense as a necessary check on the power of the legislature, but it would still have an important caveat in that a supermajority in Congress could override that veto. That way, the President couldn't simply force Congress to give him whatever he demanded.
So, the president is forced to sign something that Congress passes? That doesn’t seem fair. If Congress is controlled by the president’s opposition, they could intentionally pass politically damaging legislation, knowing the president will be forced to sign it, and knowing the president will be the one to get the vast majority of the blame. Congress, being a huge political body with several hundred members, are better able to deflect blame onto others in Congress or onto the president. The president, being a single person, can’t so easily shed criticism.
Also, Congress is extremely political and will pass poor legislation just because the title of the bill is something they don’t want to be seen voting against, something like “support for victims of 9/11 bill”. With the presidency being limited to two terms, they are shielded from political backlash in their final term and are able to veto bills that aren’t actually good for the country.
Other systems have included executive vetoes with less power, the most obvious being a lower threshold for a super-majority needed to override the veto. Or some have used a delay veto which keeps the law from passing and forces the legislature to vote on it again after a certain period of time, but doesn't require a super-majority to overcome. Those seem like decent compromises to me.
All these younger liberals think the federal government should be able to act swiftly and quickly. That is the exact opposite of what it should be able to do. The federal government should move slowly and only implement what is good for the people that the people want. A very slow and cumbersome process is good and slows down a tyrannical government.
Just think about Trump going after as many Democrats as possible for corrupt reasons and putting them through a kangaroo court. Plenty of good reason for a Democrat President after him to pardon the political prosecution.
How is there a check and balance on the legislature without the veto? The veto serves as the enumerated check and balance on the legislative branch, with the later interpretation of judicial review being another.
Making the process of legislation slower is a feature rather than a drawback.
Presidential veto is one thing but he is an elected official and the head of the government. A bigger problem is commutation and pardons which kinda defeats the point of juries and criminal justice.
Do you think the reason you don’t see much Congressional abuse is because Congress is slow as shit and its members too cowardly to make any move forward if they can’t guarantee reelection?
The slowness is by design. It is so permanent changes are difficult to make. the executive moves fast. the changes are impermanent. it’s a nice balance when everyone doesn’t suck.
The veto shouldnt have as much power as it does. Make it overriden by 57% maybe
There needs to be some mechanism for preventing presidential use of military against the people
The veto is probably most important as a check on congresses power than an executive power. No branch of power should have one unlimitted ability to determine law.
It also gives congress the power to overturn the veto. Only SCOTUS has the power to completely undo a law passed by the congress and signed by the president.
But...was our government set up initially to have to sue in order to get things done or is suing a modern method of getting around constitutional law?
It helps balance the abuse of a system corrupted long ago. In the last 40 years, those have metastasised and resulted in the runaway tumouryy
The slowness is why it’s brilliant. We see other countries ram through legislation when the popular wind blows on a particular direction.
Congress can override the veto if they have sufficient backing for a bill. The Veto only applies to thin majority legislation.
I don't disagree, but Congress has been progressively giving away its power since at least the 80s.
So what power should the president have, because that's the only clear one left.
I mean it allowed slavery until there was an amendment.
fwiw I think the pardon power is much more egregious
Checks and balances.
Checks and balances.
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