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Executive order vs. legislation is a meaningless distinction to most people. What most people care about is what they or someone else can get in trouble for an

Executive order vs. legislation is a meaningless distinction to most people. What most people care about is what they or someone else can get in trouble for and what consequences they will face, and more generally just how good they perceive their life to be. It's like trying to distinguish between two diseases with long latinate names; what matters is how sick you feel and what treatment will stop it. Insofar as people do care, I think many people actually prefer executive order-style action because they perceive it as swifter, more direct, and less tied up in debate, dithering, and red tape. But mostly what people care about is just "are things happening the way I want them to happen". If yes, they won't care about the mechanism that produced that; if no, they will blame whoever they perceive to be responsible, whether or not they actually are.

jerlam 2y ago
Side discussion, but the United States having two separate, elected legislative and executive branches is kind of lousy. It makes it difficult, as you say, to understand who is responsible for anything. Yet we have somehow convinced ourselves that it is the best system, because we have also convinced ourselves we are the best country. Most countries with parliamentary systems don't have this problem, where a person votes for a party and that party works with other parties to elect the the head executive. That head executive answers to the legislative. There aren't situations where the legislative and executive branches aren't politically aligned (a divided government) which has become common in the US and basically where nothing can get done. If you look at other countries that also have Presidential systems, the US is not in very good company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of_government#Presidential_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of...
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  Maybe, but I think another part of it is just a dangerously broad construal of the whole concept of executive power. Executive means you execute. Someone else should decide. Executive authority just means you are authorized to do what someone else said should be done. We have gone down a weird road in the US with the creation of "quasi-legislative" agencies that are created by Congress but are then under the control of the president although their function is essentially legislative. Instead Congress should just be able to entirely specify every aspect of those bodies' operations, including what (if any) the president's role is. In other words, the president can "use" executive authority, but the legislature should be in charge of deciding what counts as executive authority in the first place. If congress wants to delegate power to arbitrary bodies with no presidential involvement, they should be able to do so by passing a law as usual. You can of course say that a reckless executive (like the one we have now) would still run amok, but I think we'd have less of a problem if these matters had been clarified long ago.

jerlam 2y ago

Side discussion, but the United States having two separate, elected legislative and executive branches is kind of lousy. It makes it difficult, as you say, to understand who is responsible for anything. Yet we have somehow convinced ourselves that it is the best system, because we have also convinced ourselves we are the best country. Most countries with parliamentary systems don't have this problem, where a person votes for a party and that party works with other parties to elect the the head executive. That head executive answers to the legislative. There aren't situations where the legislative and executive branches aren't politically aligned (a divided government) which has become common in the US and basically where nothing can get done. If you look at other countries that also have Presidential systems, the US is not in very good company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of_government#Presidential_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of...

BrenBarn 2y ago
Maybe, but I think another part of it is just a dangerously broad construal of the whole concept of executive power. Executive means you execute. Someone else should decide. Executive authority just means you are authorized to do what someone else said should be done. We have gone down a weird road in the US with the creation of "quasi-legislative" agencies that are created by Congress but are then under the control of the president although their function is essentially legislative. Instead Congress should just be able to entirely specify every aspect of those bodies' operations, including what (if any) the president's role is. In other words, the president can "use" executive authority, but the legislature should be in charge of deciding what counts as executive authority in the first place. If congress wants to delegate power to arbitrary bodies with no presidential involvement, they should be able to do so by passing a law as usual. You can of course say that a reckless executive (like the one we have now) would still run amok, but I think we'd have less of a problem if these matters had been clarified long ago.