Let’s envision a time in the not-too-distant future. Trump is gone, and Congress is in the hands of a reasonable and bi-partisan group of legislators whose primary concern is the national welfare (it’s my fantasy, just roll with it).
What reforms should they put into place to ensure that our current national nightmare doesn’t happen again?
The last 18 months have shown that putting your hopes in “norms” and “checks and balances” doesn’t mean squat, when faced with a complete loon in the White House and spineless enablers in Congress. So we need some legislation with teeth. My list:
The Emoluments Clause. Ideally through a court decision (I believe there are cases wending their way now); but if not, then through a constitutional amendment: an explicit definition of ways in which the president cannot enrich himself through his office.
FEC? ruling that all presidential candidates must release their tax returns.
Congressional committee structure: change House and Senate rules, so that committees concerned with national or homeland security are to be comprised of equal representation from both parties, with co-chairs. The House Intelligence Committee was a complete embarrassment.
Advise & Consent. The most egregious and infuriating abuse of power in US legislative history was Mitch McConnell’s ignoring of Obama’s SCOTUS appointment. Again, ideally through a court decision but an amendment if necessary – an unequivocal statement that the president’s appointment power extends to the last day of his term; and that the Senate has xx days to exercise their right to advise and consent. Failure to do so would result in the nominee’s appointment by default.
Move the DOJ. (I’m not sure how I feel about this but I’m throwing it out for debate). The DOJ becomes part of the Judicial branch. The Attorney General is appointed by the president to a 5 year term, and can only be removed by impeachment.
I don’t know if you’re being satirical or not but the “superdelegate” system in the Democratic National Convention is a way of ensuring party conformity regardless of how generally unappealing the approved candidate may be. Hillary Clinton was favored by the Democratic leadership but not by primary voters at large, and even with the superdelegates she was challenged to clinch the nomination against an opponent who wasn’t even historically a member of the party. The result is that the nominee was historically unpopular with the general electorate. Trump’s ascendency aside, the more open system of the GOP at least reflects the general will, divided as it may be.
As a general measure, reducing the dominance of a two party system (which, despite claims to the contrary was never the original intention) and encouraging the formation of coalition governance at least assures that all viewpoints are given some representation. Limiting if not completely exclusing private funding in promoting candidates in political races is crucial to ensuring that good ideas, rather than well-backed candidates, are heard, and despite Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission is not a violation of “free speech”, particularly when so much of that supposed “free speech” is maliciious, inflammatory, and often wholly untrue. Candidates being given equal access to present their issues meets the intent of free speech, and “corporate persons” are not actual people regardless of the semantic manipulations of legalisms.
It would be desireable to remove the provisions that were specifically designed to placate slavery advocates, specifically the Electoral College, but I’m not fully persuaded that a direct popular vote is necessarily preferable, or that a strong executive which is essentially independent of the legislative branch has worked all that well in practice. The division of powers enshrined in the American federal system has been taught as dogma to be superior but has actually resulted in a lot of political discord and a lack of accountability as the President blames Congress and vice versa.
Moving the DoJ into the judicial branch may seem desireable from the standpoint of being independent but much of what the DoJ does aside from prosecution are legitimately executive functions. It probably makes more sense to have a judicial investigative branch with the judiciary and an agency that specifically polices Congress and the Executive while the FBI, DEA, BATFE, and other enforcement and regulatory agencies remain in an executive department.
The irony burns like thermite! Unfortunately, it would be difficult to fully encompass all of the various and largely undocumented powers of the executive office in a single amendment, particularly authority arising from future social, political, and technological developments. The Founding Fathers certainly never anticipated the president being able to launch drone strikes around the world or manipulating the electorate via the use of social media, and we may similarly lack foresight into the future of the office. It would seem better to fundamentally change the nature of the office to render it more accountable beyond a once-every-four-year electoral cycle.
All the anti-nepotism and anti-conflict-of-interest laws, and related regulations that currently don’t apply to the president, DO apply to the president.
-Do away with the electoral college. The Presidency should be decided by the popular vote.
-Shorten the primaries. Right now undue weight is given to early primaries in states with small electorates. Not to mention, the nation spends 2 years on the next election, and the current government becomes a rump government far sooner than it should. A solution would be to have all primaries on the same day, with a national day off for voting, perhaps 3 months prior to the general election.
-End gerrymandering. Handle re-districting with balanced committees, with oversight by the DOJ or another neutral body.
Campaign finance reform - I would imagine the entire process needs a review, but in particular I’d like Citizens United reversed, and I’d like to make it impossible for foreign citizens, corporations, organizations, agencies, or governments to put money into our elections.
Cybersecurity - Yes, we’re are doing some things to protect the country, but we’re clearly not doing everything. I’d like to see this area of national security significantly strengthened. Our elections and our infrastructure and our banking and our communications (etc, etc, etc) should be as secure as we can make them.
I don’t know what we can do, but we gotta do something about FOX and other deeply partisan, deeply misinformed sources. Bias is unavoidable, but no matter how much the right complains about CNN or Maddow, on their worst days they’re miles about Hannity’s or Alex Jones’ best days. I believe in the free press, but they’re very troubling.
Also, things that are norms need to be spelled out. Tighten up some of the rules. Make explicit rules. Not “should” but “shall” or “shall not” and have automatic repercussions. “The president shall release a medical statement by a qualified doctor or he shall be censured.” The President AND his immediate family should be required to live in the White House or Camp David. There shouldn’t be this Maralago super expensive bullshit, or when Melania couldn’t be bothered to move to DC. Not that I can’t understand why she did it, but it was ridiculous.
I forgot one of the most important things: not just gerrymandering, but ensuring all kinds of voting irregularities are at the lowest they can be. Better registration, getting rid of revocation of felons’ rights to vote, early voting, better polling places and times, SECURE ballots and registration with paper trails. A sincere discussion about automatic registration. Get rid of the ID laws unless it’s free to get one and very easy. We are not a free country when we place hurdle after hurdle for certain kinds of citizens to vote.
It fundamentally doesn’t matter what reforms you pass. If the people running for office, and winning offices, are not people of good character, they will either find loopholes to exploit, or just ignore the rules.
You already have more than enough rules to reign in Trump’s worst excesses. The problem is, the people who have the power to do that under the current rules simply have no interest in actually doing that. And no set of rules will fix that problem.
No more group political donations. Political donations all sent through a non-partisan Donations Office to be recorded next to the individual’s name, and limited to a maximum amount of $200 and a maximum frequency of once per calendar year. Candidates included - they may only contribute $200 of their own money to their own campaign.
