9 ms·

I suspect it would be a good idea if the US abolished the presidency and moved to a parliamentary system. Turns out that concentrating so much power in a single

by jpster 1y ago

I suspect it would be a good idea if the US abolished the presidency and moved to a parliamentary system. Turns out that concentrating so much power in a single position is a bad idea.

YZF 1y ago
You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached. I think the trick has to be to just get better people into those positions. Which means better people need to have some incentive to get into politics. It's a tough one for sure.
- lawn 1y ago
  In Sweden our "prime minister" does not have all the power, not even close.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  There may be some parliamentary country where what you say is correct, but in general, yeah, no, that’s not how it works. Remember Liz Truss, all 49 days of her? A PM who fucks up on a Truss/Trump scale generally finds themselves very rapidly seeking alternative employment. Truss was forced to appoint a borderline sane chancellor about two weeks after causing the bond yield to go crazy, and was gone within another couple of weeks.
  - AstralStorm 1y ago
    Unlike UK, US has only impeachment and 25th as procedures. Perhaps a convention. There is no vote of no confidence.
- ascorbic 1y ago
  The prime minister in the UK is regularly kicked out by their party, and it's the same in most parliamentary systems. Liz Truss introduced ridiculous ideological economic policies that caused a bond market revolt. Her party kicked her out within the lifetime of a lettuce. This is only possible in a parliamentary system. Most of her recent predecessors were similarly if less rapidly removed. In the past 40 years, only three prime ministers lost their job at an election. Six were either forced out or resigned. Of those, arguably only Tony Blair left through choice.
  - mikrl 1y ago
    The UK is not Canada though. You have the House of Lords, we have a Senate. We are a (con)federation, and that adds a whole new political overlay that the UK doesn’t have. The executive power of our PM relative to the body politik is much higher. We don’t have a tradition of backbench rebellion, and the PMO often wields more power than the cabinet.
    - ascorbic 1y ago
      The point is that a parliamentary system doesn't need to mean an unchecked leader
- NamTaf 1y ago
  Australia's favourite spectator sport is not, in fact, cricket or AFL, but rather watching government knife their PM whenever the political winds change direction. In the last 8 years, 4 PMs have been rolled before they've reached an election, because the party loses confidence in them. Many parliamentary systems wherein a PM is elected by the cabinet routinely demonstrate that they will use their power to remove a leader in whom they've lost confidence.
- sethammons 1y ago
  Any time the trick is to get humans "to just do" $thing, that $thing wont happen. Because humans.
- cwillu 1y ago
  The notion that JT had complete control is just utter nonsense. Federal jurisdiction is sharply limited, the opposition party is expected to be able to introduce and pass legislation during a minority government (the ppc has just been acting incompetent; the NDP managed to pass national dental care despite only hold 16% of the seats), and provincial governments have been largely doing their own thing despite federal funding initiatives.
- 3vidence 1y ago
  There really isn't need to share misinformation on HN. The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP. I'm not a big fan of JTs policies over the years but they were done via parliamentary support.
  - YZF 1y ago
    I wasn't really going after a political angle or the elections. PMs in Canada wield a ton of power and AFAIK are rarely removed. I'm not sure what exactly you consider to be misinformation here. It's extremely rare for members of parliament to vote against their party. Another example I can think of is Israel where the prime minister yields a ton of power. I might be wrong but I think the use of the Emergencies Act was not approved in Parliament? How about the weapons embargo on Israel?
    - 3vidence 1y ago
      So you can read the emergencies act here https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/canadas-emergencies-act.html https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can... It requires the house and Senate to vote amongst other requirements. PMs are re-elected every 4 years and need to continue to win their riding just like every other MP. The fact that MPs don't regularly vote against their party seems like pretty standard politics across the world. The government can also call votes of no faith to remove the current PM which has indeed happened to the last 2. I don't think you need malice to spread misinformation you just have not done sufficient research in this topic before making your comments. Edit: I'm not familiar with the structure of Israel's government so I cant comment on how much power their PM has individually.
      - YZF 1y ago
        https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-premiers-cabinet-1.6350734 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-premiers-cabinet-1.... "Once cabinet declares an emergency, it takes effect right away — but the government still needs to go to Parliament within seven days to get approval. If either the Commons or the Senate votes against the motion, the emergency declaration is revoked." Seems like this was later approved by parliament... Do you have a link showing it was approved by senate? Right now we have an unelected PM. Not sure how the re-election after 4 years is relevant. A US president also has to be re-elected. I said I might be wrong on the emergency act. and indeed I was wrong (-ish). But you're correct that I need to do better research. I was going from memory and indeed the initial application was before the approval but you are still technically correct. Were the reciprocal tariffs on the US also approved by parliament? I think you mean no confidence? Yes. This is generally something that happens in a minority government. Anyways, I still think PMs in Canada effectively have a lot of power. But I stand corrected on the extent of their power. It is pretty rare they are removed by their party/coalition but the government has occasionally fallen due to votes of no confidence - yes. There is a complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeated_by_votes_of_no_confidence#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeat... EDIT: Also I think you're being a little bit extreme in your "spreading misinformation" comment. > The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP. Is clearly not accurate either. > You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached. It's true that the mechanism of power in Canada and Israel (the two parliamentary systems I'm familiar with) are different but the PMs do have a lot of power. Canada being a federation maybe a bit less (but the US is also a federation). The PMs party rarely goes against him (and maybe the vote above is an example for that). But yes, as I said above no confidence votes do (rarely) happen in Canada. The US president's powers are also limited, they rarely seem to get anything real done. I don't know of an objective measure there to compare the "power" of a PM vs. a President. PMs can be removed by parliament (or rather the government forced to go to elections). US presidents can also be removed (in theory). This was more of my opinion/countering the idea that parliamentary systems just magically fix everything. I don't think they do. But I'll try and improve my accuracy when making random comments. EDIT2: https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020db_2022-02-23-e https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d... https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020db_2022-02-23-e#9 https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d... "Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Therefore, honourable senators, I ask for leave of the Senate to end the debate on the motion to confirm the public order emergency proclaimed on February 14, 2022, and revoked earlier today, and to withdraw the order for the consideration of the motion, with the Senate resuming sittings following the rules, orders and practices that would otherwise be in effect."
fjfaase 1y ago
The president has all the power that the congress and the senate gives him. Previous presidents were not given this much power. The bad guys are in the congress and the senate for not upholding the constitution.
- jjav 1y ago
  I think the current state of affair has exposed a fundamental bug in the consitution. Sure, the US has three branches of government that are supposed to be checks and balances on each other. Which has, mostly, worked really great. But turns out there is no way to enforce this. If we get a president that doesn't care about any of this and is happy to ignore everyone else, there isn't actually any way to enforce the separation of duties of the three branches.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    The problem we have today is that the one runaway branch has support from at least one of the branches meant to act as a check on power (the legislative). Congress should be stepping in if the president is overstepping his legal authority, or if they wish to reduce his legal authority. The Republican party has control of Congress and our political system has devolved into a game of blind faith in your team, neither party is willing to go against their president in a meaningful way. We need principled leaders who care to run an effective government based on our constitution. We have few, if any, of those people in charge.
    - Balgair 1y ago
      >neither party is willing to go against their president in a meaningful way. So, what's going on is that Donny himself has all the money. Not personally, but his various election funds have more than than the rest of the Republicans combined. Obama has a similar set-up back in 2012, but not nearly as disproportionate as Donny has. Republicans can't go against Donny without risking a primary opponent funded by Donny that will oust them. The Democrats do not have this funding problem to the same degree. What this means is that the Republican party is only going to go against Donny (impeachment) when they figure that the average Republican Primary voter in deeply red districts will have a 50/50 chance of voting (actual polling, not vibes) the way Donny tells them too. And that reassessment is not going to happen until at least late summer 2026.
_heimdall 1y ago
We don't need to abolish the presidency or entirely change our system for a parliamentary model. We do need to drastically shrink the executive branch and its powers though. I've found it interesting that so many are seriously concerned with what Trump is doing but not why the executive branch has the authority to do it in the first place.
- bloopernova 1y ago
  I was thinking that the US marshals need to be the enforcement arm of the courts. But I am not sure if that would help much in the current situation. Maybe police and federal enforcement agencies should be solely under Congress? At least then senior people can actually get fired for obeying unlawful orders from the executive.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    The judicial branch is meant only to provide clarify of laws on the books. I'm not sure what they would do with an enforcement agency, and I'd be worried about what that would do with regards to the types of people attracted to those judicial positions. The legislative branch already has a lot of power. I'd be very concerned giving them the direct control, or even shared control, over enforcement. They should be controlling enforcement through legislation. That leaves the executive, and personally I don't see a problem with enforcement living there. That is a very good reason to otherwise limit the authority of the executive branch though, and why executive orders as used today shouldn't be legal (they effectively are a legislative branch with the enforcement agencies).
    - lukas099 1y ago
      > That leaves the executive, and personally I don't see a problem with enforcement living there. What if the executive just decides not to enforce the decisions of the legislative and judicial branches?
      - _heimdall 1y ago
Aurornis 1y ago
Our current system should allow Congress to control this. They’re not. That’s the problem. You could swap it out for a parliamentary structure with the same characters and you’d get the same result. There’s a weird personality cult thing going on and everyone is waiting to see who will break ranks first, lest they get crushed by the retaliatory wrath of Trump calling his followers to oppose a person and Elon Musk dumping a mega war chest on them. There are signs that people are starting to break ranks, but it looks like they want to see him have to face the consequences of his decisions before they jump in to save him. This current policy is so bad that they’d be doing him a political favor by jumping in to disallow it. The problem for them is that he would be guaranteed to turn around and blame it on Congress. “My tariff plan was going to work, but Congress interfered!”
- rstuart4133 1y ago
  If you are persuaded by "The Goodness Paradox" (Richard Wrangham) then you are probably going to think like I do Congress and the Senate acting almost inevitable if Trump does enough damage. The book is speculation/theory on how/why the low level of intra-tribe violence in humans could have evolved. It is literally an order of magnitude less than other species. His theory is in small tribes small men routinely band together to kill an oppressive leader. The result is leaders evolved to be less violent over time. Most of the violence in other species happens because it is the primary tool leaders use to extract resourced from others, so when they do this total in-tribe violence was reduced. It had no effect on the violence between tribes, which is anything has increased in humans. If he's right this behaviour is fairly ingrained in all human males now. Wrangham's thesis is this behaviour is built on language. In order to kill the biggest and most powerful with little risk, the group had to coordinate and perhaps more importantly a level of trust had to be build up, because if one broke ranks and spilled the beans before the deed was done, the leader could pick off the insurrectionists one by one. The most startling example of this is the men who killed Caesar (some 60 to 70 of them) all sank a knife into his body. Only humans had the tool needed to build up the level of in-group trust: language. The relevance to overthrowing is Trump needs a concerted whispering campaign that takes months to to create the bonds between the "small men". We've had less than 100 days to enjoy the fruits of Trump's blessings. They've only just become aware of what he is doing to their electoral prospects. Hell, I suspect Trumps big donors like Musk have only woken up to the fact in the last couple of days that they've funded a huge threat to their personal fortunes and the businesses that create and sustain those fortunes. But they are aware now, and as you say the white anting has begun. May it continue post haste.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by jpster 1y ago

I suspect it would be a good idea if the US abolished the presidency and moved to a parliamentary system. Turns out that concentrating so much power in a single position is a bad idea.

YZF 1y ago

You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached. I think the trick has to be to just get better people into those positions. Which means better people need to have some incentive to get into politics. It's a tough one for sure.

lawn 1y ago
In Sweden our "prime minister" does not have all the power, not even close.
rsynnott 1y ago
There may be some parliamentary country where what you say is correct, but in general, yeah, no, that’s not how it works. Remember Liz Truss, all 49 days of her? A PM who fucks up on a Truss/Trump scale generally finds themselves very rapidly seeking alternative employment. Truss was forced to appoint a borderline sane chancellor about two weeks after causing the bond yield to go crazy, and was gone within another couple of weeks.
- AstralStorm 1y ago
  Unlike UK, US has only impeachment and 25th as procedures. Perhaps a convention. There is no vote of no confidence.
ascorbic 1y ago
The prime minister in the UK is regularly kicked out by their party, and it's the same in most parliamentary systems. Liz Truss introduced ridiculous ideological economic policies that caused a bond market revolt. Her party kicked her out within the lifetime of a lettuce. This is only possible in a parliamentary system. Most of her recent predecessors were similarly if less rapidly removed. In the past 40 years, only three prime ministers lost their job at an election. Six were either forced out or resigned. Of those, arguably only Tony Blair left through choice.
- mikrl 1y ago
  The UK is not Canada though. You have the House of Lords, we have a Senate. We are a (con)federation, and that adds a whole new political overlay that the UK doesn’t have. The executive power of our PM relative to the body politik is much higher. We don’t have a tradition of backbench rebellion, and the PMO often wields more power than the cabinet.
  - ascorbic 1y ago
    The point is that a parliamentary system doesn't need to mean an unchecked leader
NamTaf 1y ago
Australia's favourite spectator sport is not, in fact, cricket or AFL, but rather watching government knife their PM whenever the political winds change direction. In the last 8 years, 4 PMs have been rolled before they've reached an election, because the party loses confidence in them. Many parliamentary systems wherein a PM is elected by the cabinet routinely demonstrate that they will use their power to remove a leader in whom they've lost confidence.
sethammons 1y ago
Any time the trick is to get humans "to just do" $thing, that $thing wont happen. Because humans.
cwillu 1y ago
The notion that JT had complete control is just utter nonsense. Federal jurisdiction is sharply limited, the opposition party is expected to be able to introduce and pass legislation during a minority government (the ppc has just been acting incompetent; the NDP managed to pass national dental care despite only hold 16% of the seats), and provincial governments have been largely doing their own thing despite federal funding initiatives.
3vidence 1y ago
There really isn't need to share misinformation on HN. The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP. I'm not a big fan of JTs policies over the years but they were done via parliamentary support.
- YZF 1y ago
  I wasn't really going after a political angle or the elections. PMs in Canada wield a ton of power and AFAIK are rarely removed. I'm not sure what exactly you consider to be misinformation here. It's extremely rare for members of parliament to vote against their party. Another example I can think of is Israel where the prime minister yields a ton of power. I might be wrong but I think the use of the Emergencies Act was not approved in Parliament? How about the weapons embargo on Israel?
  - 3vidence 1y ago
    So you can read the emergencies act here https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/canadas-emergencies-act.html https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can... It requires the house and Senate to vote amongst other requirements. PMs are re-elected every 4 years and need to continue to win their riding just like every other MP. The fact that MPs don't regularly vote against their party seems like pretty standard politics across the world. The government can also call votes of no faith to remove the current PM which has indeed happened to the last 2. I don't think you need malice to spread misinformation you just have not done sufficient research in this topic before making your comments. Edit: I'm not familiar with the structure of Israel's government so I cant comment on how much power their PM has individually.
    - YZF 1y ago
      https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-premiers-cabinet-1.6350734 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-premiers-cabinet-1.... "Once cabinet declares an emergency, it takes effect right away — but the government still needs to go to Parliament within seven days to get approval. If either the Commons or the Senate votes against the motion, the emergency declaration is revoked." Seems like this was later approved by parliament... Do you have a link showing it was approved by senate? Right now we have an unelected PM. Not sure how the re-election after 4 years is relevant. A US president also has to be re-elected. I said I might be wrong on the emergency act. and indeed I was wrong (-ish). But you're correct that I need to do better research. I was going from memory and indeed the initial application was before the approval but you are still technically correct. Were the reciprocal tariffs on the US also approved by parliament? I think you mean no confidence? Yes. This is generally something that happens in a minority government. Anyways, I still think PMs in Canada effectively have a lot of power. But I stand corrected on the extent of their power. It is pretty rare they are removed by their party/coalition but the government has occasionally fallen due to votes of no confidence - yes. There is a complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeated_by_votes_of_no_confidence#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeat... EDIT: Also I think you're being a little bit extreme in your "spreading misinformation" comment. > The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP. Is clearly not accurate either. > You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached. It's true that the mechanism of power in Canada and Israel (the two parliamentary systems I'm familiar with) are different but the PMs do have a lot of power. Canada being a federation maybe a bit less (but the US is also a federation). The PMs party rarely goes against him (and maybe the vote above is an example for that). But yes, as I said above no confidence votes do (rarely) happen in Canada. The US president's powers are also limited, they rarely seem to get anything real done. I don't know of an objective measure there to compare the "power" of a PM vs. a President. PMs can be removed by parliament (or rather the government forced to go to elections). US presidents can also be removed (in theory). This was more of my opinion/countering the idea that parliamentary systems just magically fix everything. I don't think they do. But I'll try and improve my accuracy when making random comments. EDIT2: https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020db_2022-02-23-e https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d... https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020db_2022-02-23-e#9 https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/020d... "Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Therefore, honourable senators, I ask for leave of the Senate to end the debate on the motion to confirm the public order emergency proclaimed on February 14, 2022, and revoked earlier today, and to withdraw the order for the consideration of the motion, with the Senate resuming sittings following the rules, orders and practices that would otherwise be in effect."

fjfaase 1y ago

The president has all the power that the congress and the senate gives him. Previous presidents were not given this much power. The bad guys are in the congress and the senate for not upholding the constitution.

jjav 1y ago
I think the current state of affair has exposed a fundamental bug in the consitution. Sure, the US has three branches of government that are supposed to be checks and balances on each other. Which has, mostly, worked really great. But turns out there is no way to enforce this. If we get a president that doesn't care about any of this and is happy to ignore everyone else, there isn't actually any way to enforce the separation of duties of the three branches.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  The problem we have today is that the one runaway branch has support from at least one of the branches meant to act as a check on power (the legislative). Congress should be stepping in if the president is overstepping his legal authority, or if they wish to reduce his legal authority. The Republican party has control of Congress and our political system has devolved into a game of blind faith in your team, neither party is willing to go against their president in a meaningful way. We need principled leaders who care to run an effective government based on our constitution. We have few, if any, of those people in charge.
  - Balgair 1y ago
    >neither party is willing to go against their president in a meaningful way. So, what's going on is that Donny himself has all the money. Not personally, but his various election funds have more than than the rest of the Republicans combined. Obama has a similar set-up back in 2012, but not nearly as disproportionate as Donny has. Republicans can't go against Donny without risking a primary opponent funded by Donny that will oust them. The Democrats do not have this funding problem to the same degree. What this means is that the Republican party is only going to go against Donny (impeachment) when they figure that the average Republican Primary voter in deeply red districts will have a 50/50 chance of voting (actual polling, not vibes) the way Donny tells them too. And that reassessment is not going to happen until at least late summer 2026.

_heimdall 1y ago

We don't need to abolish the presidency or entirely change our system for a parliamentary model. We do need to drastically shrink the executive branch and its powers though. I've found it interesting that so many are seriously concerned with what Trump is doing but not why the executive branch has the authority to do it in the first place.

bloopernova 1y ago
I was thinking that the US marshals need to be the enforcement arm of the courts. But I am not sure if that would help much in the current situation. Maybe police and federal enforcement agencies should be solely under Congress? At least then senior people can actually get fired for obeying unlawful orders from the executive.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  The judicial branch is meant only to provide clarify of laws on the books. I'm not sure what they would do with an enforcement agency, and I'd be worried about what that would do with regards to the types of people attracted to those judicial positions. The legislative branch already has a lot of power. I'd be very concerned giving them the direct control, or even shared control, over enforcement. They should be controlling enforcement through legislation. That leaves the executive, and personally I don't see a problem with enforcement living there. That is a very good reason to otherwise limit the authority of the executive branch though, and why executive orders as used today shouldn't be legal (they effectively are a legislative branch with the enforcement agencies).
  - lukas099 1y ago
    > That leaves the executive, and personally I don't see a problem with enforcement living there. What if the executive just decides not to enforce the decisions of the legislative and judicial branches?
    - _heimdall 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

Our current system should allow Congress to control this. They’re not. That’s the problem. You could swap it out for a parliamentary structure with the same characters and you’d get the same result. There’s a weird personality cult thing going on and everyone is waiting to see who will break ranks first, lest they get crushed by the retaliatory wrath of Trump calling his followers to oppose a person and Elon Musk dumping a mega war chest on them. There are signs that people are starting to break ranks, but it looks like they want to see him have to face the consequences of his decisions before they jump in to save him. This current policy is so bad that they’d be doing him a political favor by jumping in to disallow it. The problem for them is that he would be guaranteed to turn around and blame it on Congress. “My tariff plan was going to work, but Congress interfered!”

rstuart4133 1y ago
If you are persuaded by "The Goodness Paradox" (Richard Wrangham) then you are probably going to think like I do Congress and the Senate acting almost inevitable if Trump does enough damage. The book is speculation/theory on how/why the low level of intra-tribe violence in humans could have evolved. It is literally an order of magnitude less than other species. His theory is in small tribes small men routinely band together to kill an oppressive leader. The result is leaders evolved to be less violent over time. Most of the violence in other species happens because it is the primary tool leaders use to extract resourced from others, so when they do this total in-tribe violence was reduced. It had no effect on the violence between tribes, which is anything has increased in humans. If he's right this behaviour is fairly ingrained in all human males now. Wrangham's thesis is this behaviour is built on language. In order to kill the biggest and most powerful with little risk, the group had to coordinate and perhaps more importantly a level of trust had to be build up, because if one broke ranks and spilled the beans before the deed was done, the leader could pick off the insurrectionists one by one. The most startling example of this is the men who killed Caesar (some 60 to 70 of them) all sank a knife into his body. Only humans had the tool needed to build up the level of in-group trust: language. The relevance to overthrowing is Trump needs a concerted whispering campaign that takes months to to create the bonds between the "small men". We've had less than 100 days to enjoy the fruits of Trump's blessings. They've only just become aware of what he is doing to their electoral prospects. Hell, I suspect Trumps big donors like Musk have only woken up to the fact in the last couple of days that they've funded a huge threat to their personal fortunes and the businesses that create and sustain those fortunes. But they are aware now, and as you say the white anting has begun. May it continue post haste.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]