General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: You have GOT to be fucking kidding me!! [View all]Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)It seems it doesn't matter who we elect president any more. The President -- or the presidency, if you prefer -- is an institution with elephantiasis, like our largest corporations. It's too big and too imperious to represent a democracy as a head of state.
If I could rewrite the US Constitution, I would make the most changes in the executive branch. There would be no unified executive. Cabinet officers would be appointed by the Prime Minister with the approval of parliament and oversee a bureaucracy made up of technocrats, whose job, collectively, is to execute the law as passed by parliament. A national coordinator could be appointed to make sure everyone is on the same page as to enforcing the law. This would be the closest thing to a chief executive we would have, but he, too, would be a technocrat with no real power to make policy. All policy making authority rests in parliament, whose members are elected by the people.
We could have a president, a figurehead to officially call election after parliament has sat for a set period of time or when the PM resigns in a crisis of confidence and then ask the leader of the party with the most seats to form a new government after the election. Otherwise, the president can be assigned duties as parliament sees fit, such as finding lost puppies in our national parks. You know, things that you could actually trust Ronald Reagan to do right. Under no circumstances should this president be given enough power to make any mischief. That kind of president will be a thing of the past.