I am puzzled by the American system. It is best described as an elective dictatorship. I suppose that the founding fathers wanted to distance themselves from the British system by eliminating the checks and balances inherent in our parliamentary system. But after escaping from rule by a King why would they replace it with a dictatorship rather tha a representative democracy?
They didn’t .
The system has been perverted.
The Congressmen and Senators are supposed to be elected representatives.
One difference between what the Founding Fathers set up, and what we have now, are political parties. AIUI, most of them were not fans of parties/factions, and felt that that was a factor which had damaged the British system.
We’ve had the same two parties entrenched in government at the Federal and State level for over 150 years now; while the stances of those parties have evolved with time, they have an effective stranglehold on the system, and smaller parties are rarely able to do more than cause a little noise.
I think for 250 years the system of co-equal branches worked well. It’s only very recently that all three have been co-opted by one party, really one person.
Yes but the system allows one man to co-opt government.
Of course the second amendment was drafted for exactly this situation.
I think that could happen with any system if everyone who could stop it didn’t bother.
The problem is not that we don’t have checks and balances, the problem is the people with that power aren’t using it.
We have had political parties in |Britain since the late 17th century without strangling the system. Of couse we have the advantage of having a head of state who has no political power
The federal government actually did very little. Most things were still managed at State level, and county level. Given the distances involved and the speed of travel and communication, nothing else was feasible.
Quite the opposite: Our system has too many checks and balances, and makes it impossible for one man to take over the government. What’s happening right now is happening because the elected Senate and House are choosing not to exercise their checks and balances, and instead just giving the President all of the power that he wants.
That’s what happens, or at least can happen, when both houses and the Presidency are all controlled by the same party. What happens when they’re controlled by different parties is that the side who wants government to be dysfunctional and do nothing can ensure that that happens.
Compared to the British system, where you always get the same party controlling the legislature and the executive, and where it’s expected that all legislators will exactly toe the party line. There, the government can always do whatever it wants, for so long as it remains in power.
The leader of the British government - the Prime Minister - has to steer a careful path which avoids alienating other members of the government. failing to do that is what has brought Starmer down
Which brings up another important difference.
Our elections are strictly scheduled: the President’s term is four years, members of the House of Representatives (the “lower house” of Congress) serve two-year terms, and Senators (the “upper house”) serve six-year terms. We don’t have votes of confidence, or snap elections; unless an officeholder steps down or is forced out, they are guaranteed to serve their entire elected term. And every officeholder knows exactly when they will next be standing for re-election.
Also, our mechanism for being “forced out” – impeachment – is intentionally a high bar: no President has ever been successfully forced out of office via impeachment (though it likely would have happened to Nixon if he had not resigned first).
What always puzzled me is why the US have a politisized Supreme Court. I cant see any benefits to that, and i cant see any benefits to see them sitting until they die.. WHY? I live in a real democracy, so maybe im biased.
Because the Founders didn’t envision a politicized Supreme Court. The Americans politicize everything now.
As a Canadian, I couldn’t name a current Supreme Court of Canada justice and I’ve met two previous SCC justices. Ours are named by the PM.
Because it’s composed of humans.
Literally, that’s it. It’s not possible to have something composed of humans that’s immune to getting politicized. I know that people in a lot of nations say that they have various institutions that are protected from politicization, but the protections ultimately all just amount to the political people saying that they won’t interfere. We used to have that, too. It fails once the political folks do start interfering.
We manage it in my country
One genius of the constitution is that this house, which is subject to turnover every 2 years, controls the purse strings.
Assuming a legitimate election, the democrats could take the house this November, and that will change a lot of what is happening right now.
In addition to being able to dictate funding, the House has the power of investigation. I’m cautiously hopeful that the Democrats can take the house and then we can spend the last 2 years of the Trump administration with public inquiries into its activities.
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Having said that, I do think that the founders would say that we didn’t abide by their design. They didn’t want senators directly elected, for example. And I’m sure they’d cite Trump as a prime example of why the electoral college was supposed to be a fail safe against a disaster of a chief executive.
but isn’t that similar to the US, where President nominates Justices beholden to him?
Hypothetically, the Justices are not supposed to be beholden to the President who nominated them to the Court, and historically, they often have not been. Again, checks and balances.
The fact that the current President believes that they should be is not normal, nor is it historically typical.
The British system avoids “lame duck” leaders or hung parliaments