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I sorely hope that Trump will teach Americans to get over their misguided king-complex and realise that the president should be a figurehead with limited power,

I sorely hope that Trump will teach Americans to get over their misguided king-complex and realise that the president should be a figurehead with limited power, and an executive leader only during time sensitive (military) crises. The rest of the government should be governed by properly legislated remits, and answering to Congress, not the president. It's ridiculous and a recipe for disaster to leave so many policy areas to the whim of a single person.

mikeyouse 10y ago
Leaving it up to "the people" (read: Congress) over the past decade would've surely put us in a much worse position.
- xapata 10y ago
  I voted for Obama, but I'm not so sure Congress would have been (much) worse.
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    I honestly don't understand this viewpoint.. the false equivalence lately is just insane. We're talking about Climate Change, can anyone possibly believe that the Republicans in Congress for the past 6 years would have been better on Climate than what Obama achieved through executive orders? Do people just not pay attention? Here's a quote from the official GOP platform[1]: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. Fuck it, I'll quote the rest of the references to climate in the official platform! > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. We will enforce that standard throughout the executive branch, among civil servants and presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories; no such agreement can be binding upon the United States until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate. > We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits Washington from giving any money to “any affiliated organization of the United Nations” which grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund. > We firmly believe environmental problems are best solved by giving incentives for human ingenuity and the development of new technologies, not through top-down, command-and-control regulations that stifle economic growth and cost thousands of jobs. These people are pathological. [1] - https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/
    - mseebach 10y ago
      On net, long term, Obama will turn out not to have been very effective at all, because everything he's done through executive order has/will be undone through executive orders in the few weeks. That's the curse of executive order, and why good, long term legislation won't arise from executive order.
      - mikeyouse 10y ago
        That's all well and good, but there is absolutely no indicaition that congress would have produced anything resembling "good, long-term" legislation. In my completely made up system, if we started at 0 and add up the number of points in favor of averting Climate Change, Obama probably added 3 for a few years with the Paris Agreement, CAFE and some of the EPA rules were also pretty beneficial, maybe net 4 over his term. Call it +10 for Obama. Trump's going to reverse many of those decisions, probably make some of them much worse within the next few years. Let's say he wipes out all of Obama's work and does 50% more 'damage' in this system. So by 2020, we're at -5. If we had left it to the Republicans in Congress, we would have been at least at -5 every year since 2010.. So -5 net with Obama/Trump's dueling executive orders or -50 with Republicans in Congress. Yes the system is made up and the points don't matter, but there is absolutely no way we would be in a better position. It's the height of naivety to dismiss what they promised to do and to assume they would have suddenly changed their views 180º to support action on climate change for 'the limelight'.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        Obama issued executive orders after asking and arguably begging Congress to act. It's not like he came into office and started kicking over the metaphorical furniture. When we're talking about the quality of the policy he attempted to promulgate, rehashing partisan mischaracterizations about his style of governance is unhelpful.
    - xapata 10y ago
      The president could still veto, even if the pseudo-legislative powers were removed. If the executive were less powerful, perhaps the attitudes in Congress would be different. It's hard to know how they would behave, because we haven't had that situation in living memory. I read a good article conjecturing that the decline in civility in Congress is due to the increased pressure to essentially run a permanent election campaign. The congress people used to spend more time in Washington becoming friends, but now spend most of their time at home, campaigning. Now I can't find my source...
- mseebach 10y ago
  The cost of getting what you want from the president is the next president undoing it. Over the long term, I suspect that's way more destructive and wasteful than waiting longer for Congress to decide to do something which then stands a chance of being the law for a while and actually achieving something. Also, when you stop giving all the important, flashy stuff to the president and let Congress have a bit of limelight, you'll probably find them rising to the challenge (more than today, at least, where Congress only gets credit for the boring stuff that the president don't want).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  'the people' and 'Congress' are two distinct entities as far as the Constitution is concerned. It is not appropriate to equate one with the other.
nostrademons 10y ago
Separation of powers is a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution. There's no guarantee that the legislature will be favorable to your positions either. If you're of a liberal, progressive, or even moderate bent, the past 6 years would've been much worse had Obama not been a check on the Republican Congress. Since 1980, periods when both the Presidency and both houses of Congress have been under the control of one party have been quite rare, and the public usually votes out one house of Congress in the next election. Democrats in 09-10, Republicans from 02-06, Democrats in 92-94, and that's it. (Interestingly, this is not universal throughout history. Dem's controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency under the Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter administrations, while Republicans controlled them during the Mckinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations. The last extended time period of divided control was the post-Reconstruction Gilded Age era from 1875-1897...perhaps leading credence to those who say the current time period is much more like the Long Depression, Gilded Age, and lead up to WW1 than the Great Depression and lead-up to WW2.)
- mseebach 10y ago
  What we have now isn't separation of power, it's immense power of the office of the president. The president should be a check on Congress (which he is), but Congress should also be a check on the president (they're not, effectively, because they have handed over so much power to him). The same power that made Obama good to progressives will make Trump very, very bad to them.
  - throwaway4job 10y ago
    I strongly believe that Obama was net good in large part because there was so much opposition to him. As such he couldn't ram-rod a one-sided version of anything through. Similarly, I feel that Bush's and Clinton's best years were the periods where they had opposition, and couldn't use party allegiance to push things through. I've felt that one-sided rule is net-negative essentially every time it's happened in my adult life, regardless of party. Trump will just be an especially hard to ignore version of this anti-pattern, as he's made clear that he'll punish non-conformity within the GOP; and the GOP has made clear that they will do anything he requests, even when it stands against every major conservative principle.
mikeash 10y ago
I generally agree that it should be that way, but I don't think Trump is necessarily a good example of why. Both houses of Congress are run by his party, and while they don't always see eye to eye, they do on many things like climate change. If the CDC answered directly to Congress, I don't think you'd see much of a difference.
derefr 10y ago
The rest of the government already is governed by remits. To quote Wikipedia: > As the upper house, the Senate has several powers of advice and consent which are unique to it; of these include the ratification of treaties, the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, other federal executive officials, flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers. These people, once picked, "answer to" the Executive--because the function of the Executive is to coordinate the running (execution) of government. But they're picked by Congress, and thus the "character" of government--defined by the beliefs of the people who run it--is in large part up to the legislature. --- Also, if I can make an analogy here, I think there's something important to understand about the role of the President within the executive. The President's role is basically equivalent to, and in large part historically "derived from", the role of a military flag officer (e.g. a general, admiral, etc.) That is, the President is someone who: 1. coordinates a number of units that have been temporarily assigned ("attached") to them, directing those units "from above" into a strategic configuration, without knowing much about their internals; and 2. keeps a "flag staff" who are there to manage each part of their job and liase with the individual units that affect their focus, representing the flag officer in that aspect. Each unit under the flag officer's command, though, is independently headed by someone else: someone who is part of that unit rather than imposed on it from the outside; someone who was was hired by someone else long before the flag officer got there; and someone who is just temporarily serving the flag officer because they are the representative of their unit, and their unit is currently "attached" to that flag officer's command, rather than because they consider themselves to "work for" the flag officer themselves. This is an exact description of the Executive branch. Congress hires the people who head the "units" (departments.) The President then comes in with their staff and those "units"--and their representatives--get attached to the President, who gets their staff (e.g. the Secretary of Defense; the Finance Minister) to liase with the unit heads (e.g. the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.)
anigbrowl 10y ago
Are you arguing for a Constitutional change?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

mikeyouse 10y ago

Leaving it up to "the people" (read: Congress) over the past decade would've surely put us in a much worse position.

xapata 10y ago
I voted for Obama, but I'm not so sure Congress would have been (much) worse.
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  I honestly don't understand this viewpoint.. the false equivalence lately is just insane. We're talking about Climate Change, can anyone possibly believe that the Republicans in Congress for the past 6 years would have been better on Climate than what Obama achieved through executive orders? Do people just not pay attention? Here's a quote from the official GOP platform[1]: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. Fuck it, I'll quote the rest of the references to climate in the official platform! > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. We will enforce that standard throughout the executive branch, among civil servants and presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories; no such agreement can be binding upon the United States until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate. > We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits Washington from giving any money to “any affiliated organization of the United Nations” which grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund. > We firmly believe environmental problems are best solved by giving incentives for human ingenuity and the development of new technologies, not through top-down, command-and-control regulations that stifle economic growth and cost thousands of jobs. These people are pathological. [1] - https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/
  - mseebach 10y ago
    On net, long term, Obama will turn out not to have been very effective at all, because everything he's done through executive order has/will be undone through executive orders in the few weeks. That's the curse of executive order, and why good, long term legislation won't arise from executive order.
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      That's all well and good, but there is absolutely no indicaition that congress would have produced anything resembling "good, long-term" legislation. In my completely made up system, if we started at 0 and add up the number of points in favor of averting Climate Change, Obama probably added 3 for a few years with the Paris Agreement, CAFE and some of the EPA rules were also pretty beneficial, maybe net 4 over his term. Call it +10 for Obama. Trump's going to reverse many of those decisions, probably make some of them much worse within the next few years. Let's say he wipes out all of Obama's work and does 50% more 'damage' in this system. So by 2020, we're at -5. If we had left it to the Republicans in Congress, we would have been at least at -5 every year since 2010.. So -5 net with Obama/Trump's dueling executive orders or -50 with Republicans in Congress. Yes the system is made up and the points don't matter, but there is absolutely no way we would be in a better position. It's the height of naivety to dismiss what they promised to do and to assume they would have suddenly changed their views 180º to support action on climate change for 'the limelight'.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Obama issued executive orders after asking and arguably begging Congress to act. It's not like he came into office and started kicking over the metaphorical furniture. When we're talking about the quality of the policy he attempted to promulgate, rehashing partisan mischaracterizations about his style of governance is unhelpful.
  - xapata 10y ago
    The president could still veto, even if the pseudo-legislative powers were removed. If the executive were less powerful, perhaps the attitudes in Congress would be different. It's hard to know how they would behave, because we haven't had that situation in living memory. I read a good article conjecturing that the decline in civility in Congress is due to the increased pressure to essentially run a permanent election campaign. The congress people used to spend more time in Washington becoming friends, but now spend most of their time at home, campaigning. Now I can't find my source...
mseebach 10y ago
The cost of getting what you want from the president is the next president undoing it. Over the long term, I suspect that's way more destructive and wasteful than waiting longer for Congress to decide to do something which then stands a chance of being the law for a while and actually achieving something. Also, when you stop giving all the important, flashy stuff to the president and let Congress have a bit of limelight, you'll probably find them rising to the challenge (more than today, at least, where Congress only gets credit for the boring stuff that the president don't want).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 10y ago
'the people' and 'Congress' are two distinct entities as far as the Constitution is concerned. It is not appropriate to equate one with the other.

nostrademons 10y ago

Separation of powers is a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution. There's no guarantee that the legislature will be favorable to your positions either. If you're of a liberal, progressive, or even moderate bent, the past 6 years would've been much worse had Obama not been a check on the Republican Congress. Since 1980, periods when both the Presidency and both houses of Congress have been under the control of one party have been quite rare, and the public usually votes out one house of Congress in the next election. Democrats in 09-10, Republicans from 02-06, Democrats in 92-94, and that's it. (Interestingly, this is not universal throughout history. Dem's controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency under the Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter administrations, while Republicans controlled them during the Mckinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations. The last extended time period of divided control was the post-Reconstruction Gilded Age era from 1875-1897...perhaps leading credence to those who say the current time period is much more like the Long Depression, Gilded Age, and lead up to WW1 than the Great Depression and lead-up to WW2.)

mseebach 10y ago
What we have now isn't separation of power, it's immense power of the office of the president. The president should be a check on Congress (which he is), but Congress should also be a check on the president (they're not, effectively, because they have handed over so much power to him). The same power that made Obama good to progressives will make Trump very, very bad to them.
- throwaway4job 10y ago
  I strongly believe that Obama was net good in large part because there was so much opposition to him. As such he couldn't ram-rod a one-sided version of anything through. Similarly, I feel that Bush's and Clinton's best years were the periods where they had opposition, and couldn't use party allegiance to push things through. I've felt that one-sided rule is net-negative essentially every time it's happened in my adult life, regardless of party. Trump will just be an especially hard to ignore version of this anti-pattern, as he's made clear that he'll punish non-conformity within the GOP; and the GOP has made clear that they will do anything he requests, even when it stands against every major conservative principle.

mikeash 10y ago

I generally agree that it should be that way, but I don't think Trump is necessarily a good example of why. Both houses of Congress are run by his party, and while they don't always see eye to eye, they do on many things like climate change. If the CDC answered directly to Congress, I don't think you'd see much of a difference.

derefr 10y ago

The rest of the government already is governed by remits. To quote Wikipedia: > As the upper house, the Senate has several powers of advice and consent which are unique to it; of these include the ratification of treaties, the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, other federal executive officials, flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers. These people, once picked, "answer to" the Executive--because the function of the Executive is to coordinate the running (execution) of government. But they're picked by Congress, and thus the "character" of government--defined by the beliefs of the people who run it--is in large part up to the legislature. --- Also, if I can make an analogy here, I think there's something important to understand about the role of the President within the executive. The President's role is basically equivalent to, and in large part historically "derived from", the role of a military flag officer (e.g. a general, admiral, etc.) That is, the President is someone who: 1. coordinates a number of units that have been temporarily assigned ("attached") to them, directing those units "from above" into a strategic configuration, without knowing much about their internals; and 2. keeps a "flag staff" who are there to manage each part of their job and liase with the individual units that affect their focus, representing the flag officer in that aspect. Each unit under the flag officer's command, though, is independently headed by someone else: someone who is part of that unit rather than imposed on it from the outside; someone who was was hired by someone else long before the flag officer got there; and someone who is just temporarily serving the flag officer because they are the representative of their unit, and their unit is currently "attached" to that flag officer's command, rather than because they consider themselves to "work for" the flag officer themselves. This is an exact description of the Executive branch. Congress hires the people who head the "units" (departments.) The President then comes in with their staff and those "units"--and their representatives--get attached to the President, who gets their staff (e.g. the Secretary of Defense; the Finance Minister) to liase with the unit heads (e.g. the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.)

anigbrowl 10y ago

Are you arguing for a Constitutional change?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]