Comment by UncleOxidant
1 year ago
> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system.
Autocracies can be very stable... for a while depending on how much people are able to protest (or not). You could argue that N Korea has been "stable" (from the standpoint of the ruling family) for over 60 years.
> There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances.
Sure that's what we were all taught in school. But it turns out that the whole system is heavily dependent on the executive branch "doing the right thing". But what good is it for the Judicial or Legislative branches to rule against the executive when the executive is in charge of enforcement? Even Nixon was eventually able to be shamed into doing the right thing, but if we have a president who can't be shamed into doing the right thing... well, I suspect we're about to find out, but my guess is that the checks and balances aren't going to be effective.
All of the checks and balances are kind of predicated on the idea that each arm of government who actually bother to protect their own powers, and use those powers to rein in misbehaviour of the other branches.
But both congress and the supreme courts seem to have decided that personal ideological principles are more important than the maintenance of the U.S. democratic foundations. The Supreme Court has basically ruled that the president is above the law, and congress has refused to use its powers of impeachment to prevent the president from running roughshod over congresses laws.
Nixon wasn’t shamed into doing anything, he was threatened with very credible impeachment, and decided that getting out fast on his own two feet, was better than being taken out slow by the ankles via impeachment. But the modern Republicans have demonstrated time and time again, that as long as they’re “winning”, they don’t give two hoots how much damage they do to US democracy.
> All of the checks and balances are kind of predicated on the idea that each arm of government who actually bother to protect their own powers, and use those powers to rein in misbehaviour of the other branches.
I mean, sure, that's the Schoolhouse Rock version. But I'm talking about something else: The executive branch is the branch that controls military, FBI, CIA, BATF, US Marshals - the law enforcement agencies with guns, tanks and planes. Congress and the Courts don't have any similar enforcers. In a showdown where the courts order the executive branch to do something the executive branch can just ignore the order and continue doing what they want. The fact that this hasn't generally happened much in our history is because the executive generally had some kind of respect for the constitution and the institutions that it instantiates. If you get an executive who doesn't give a damn about anything other than maintaining their own power there's really no way to get him/her to comply.
> Nixon wasn’t shamed into doing anything, he was threatened with very credible impeachment, and decided that getting out fast on his own two feet, was better than being taken out slow by the ankles via impeachment.
Ok, but wasn't that at least partly due to the shame that he would incur if he had been impeached? He was afraid of history's judgement - though it was a bit too late for that. In other words, on some level he didn't want the impeachment stain - at a certain level he cared (again, he should've cared earlier, but he thought he was going to get away with it). Now we have a guy who has been impeached twice and he knows he's got enough toadies in the senate so that he won't ever be convicted. Even if the House goes to the Dems in '28 he's not afraid of the threat of impeachment that would likely entail. Nor does he feel any shame over any potential impeachment.
> The executive branch is the branch that controls military, FBI, CIA, BATF, US Marshals - the law enforcement agencies with guns, tanks and planes. Congress and the Courts don't have any similar enforcers.
military and law enforcement also swear an oath to uphold the constitution of the united states and to defend the nation against threats, including domestic ones. I think it's reasonable that they would defy a president who went totally off the rails to the point where he became a threat and violated the constitution.
> Autocracies can be very stable...
Sure, if you kill all dissenters , keep population terrified and into the dark, remove all sources of information with propaganda then things could stay like that for a while.
I come from autocracy and it's way more similar to the US than one might think.
It all starts with distrust of institutions, (silent) support of majority and power consolidation under executive branch. It's very hard to get out of it, and propaganda and terror just one part of it, and I'm not even sure the first.
Just to be clear I lived in Russia.
Or if you manage to get most people to not care. There can still be dissent, but it would be too limited to have an effect.
That isn't really what happened in Singapore.
Singapore is probably the world's only extant benevolent dictatorship, with two out of four prime ministers being father and son. It remains to be seen how stable it will be in the coming generations.