If you could choose to have your favorite politician be President (but the political party you oppose gets a 70% majority in both houses of Congress,) or…
…have your favorite political party get a 70% majority in both houses of Congress (but your most disliked politician gets to be President?)
This situation would be unchanged throughout eight years (midterm elections would result in no seats gained or lost.)
I’d think the 70% majority for 8 years would be most people’s choice. The party could send any bill it wanted to the President, and easily override the expected veto.
True, but there will always be Congressmen and Congesswomen who will go against their own party. (But then again, some from the opposing side might betray their own side, too, so it evens out.)
Also, the President has a lot of power that is not subject to Congressional oversight or veto.
But he – and his VP – can be impeached and removed in the time it takes for my party’s Speaker of the House to stride into the Oval Office. 
I voted for the Congressional majorities, but neither scenario is exactly good.
Same here, plus “favorite political party” is a misnomer - I’ll take the benignly incompetent and moderately corrupt party over the batshit insane and entirely corrupt one.
I think Dems are much more likely to vote against their own party than Reps, at least in the past 20 years.
Personally, I’d take the White House. There will be Supreme Court nominations, and that can have a far more lasting impact than a few terms of super majority rule in Congress.
SCOTUS noms are an important part, but they also require consent of the senate - which, in a super majority opposition senate, means you’re stuck nominating moderates.
This reminds me of the old joke about choosing “death or chi-chi.” The difference being I get to pick between two groups to legislate whether I get death or death by chi-chi. It’s an interesting though experiment though. Either party with a super majority that can freely enact all or almost all of it’s platform gives me the willies. Just give me a bit to figure whether my party or the other party in that position is marginally less odious.
You can’t consider this in a vacuum. A situation in which one party controlled the executive and the other one veto-proof (& filibuster-proof) majorities would probably result in a changed dynamic, in which the current accepted norms might change.
Obama has already pushed the envelope a lot in expanding the scope of executive orders. In a situation like that described, with a president like Obama, you might have more of that. Conversely, congress might itself get more assertive and begin asserting its prerogatives more closely than they do now as well and pass all sorts of laws micromanaging presidential authority (including laws overriding executive orders, if any).
If both branches pushed their authority to the extent possible I would probably incline go with congress. The president does get some wriggle room, in that it’s not always clear who if anyone has standing to challenge the president if he just decides to ignore the laws as passed and administer his own preferred version. (This too is currently being tested by Obama.)
Can you cite that Obama has “already pushed the envelope a lot in expanding the scope of executive orders”? From what I’ve read that’s just right-wing fantasy-land stuff, and on executive orders he’s issued no more or no more expansive executive orders than past presidents.
Actually, Obama has issued fewer executive orders per year than any Republican since Chester Arthur and fewer than any Democrat since Grover Cleveland.
Perhaps, but it’s better to put in moderates than see a parade of Clarence Thomas clones being nominated by a Republican.
The problem is that you’re reading a lot of left-wing fantasy material, and in left-wing fantasy land what you say is true.
What makes it a bit confusing is that a lot of serious legal scholars have argued that from a purely technical legal perspective Obama’s actions are legal and have precendent. That’s something that may have to be sorted out by the courts assuming the Republican lawsuit is found to have standing and proceeds, but in the meantime it’s being trumpeted a lot in LWFL.
But in my post above I wasn’t commenting about the legality of potential assertiveness. I commenting about how that might change the accepted norms of political processes. And it’s pretty clear that Obama has done this, and I believe this is widely accepted in political circles (including possibly by Obama himself).
That has zero to do with what’s being discussed.
I voted for 70% in Congress, but given the Obama intereprtation of executive power(I only have to enforce the laws I want to), it might not matter.
OTOH, at 70% majorities in both houses, the opposition could impeach the president and remove him from office. If his disregard for the law got too brazen this would probably happen, and this possibility would act as something of check on him.
This sounds different than Obama has “already pushed the envelope a lot in expanding the scope of executive orders”. I don’t think I fully understand what you’re asserting that Obama has done – are you asserting that his executive orders have been more ‘assertive’, more ‘expansive in scope’, or what, as compared to the orders of past presidents? Or are you just asserting that his orders have been contested to a greater degree by his political opposition?
If you’re asserting that there is something special and different about the nature of his executive orders, then I don’t accept that without some solid cites.
What do you mean by “favorite party”? Are parties other than Democrats and Republicans included?
So if a Republican cuts taxes by executive order by instructing the IRS to not attempt to collect any further taxes from someone who has already paid 15% of his or her income, this would be a legal use of executive power?
The first. The scale and scope of Obama’s executive orders and the situations in which he’s used them surpass what has generally been accepted as the norm in the past.
[Again, it’s not about what’s technically legal. It’s as if the Senate majority decided to use the “Advice and Consent” clause to insist that all appointments be completely aligned with their ideology. Might be legal and nothing you can do about it, but it’s not how the system has operated until now, by either party.]
You don’t have to accept it. I say my thing and you say yours. 