In response to a post in another thread, I posted something that I’ve been thinking for a while, & have decided to just come out & say. And it’s really it’s own debate.
Good in theory, but in practice, most Americans are Americans first, not Missourians or Floridians or what have you; & we’re mobile. If the pols in the several states think that voters in their states are fixated on how their state should be different from the rest of the nation, that’s only because the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t pay any attention at all to state politics, & only the few that somehow care about these archaic things called “states” are voting for state officeholders.
Most Americans only know one politician: The President of the United States of America. And it is the President of the United States of America who will be credited & blamed for everything, whether he was involved or not. Therefore, state offices are effectively unaccountable. Really, for the sake of responsible government, we should bite the bullet & abolish most superfluous levels of representation, as those people are utterly ignored & can damn near get away with murder under the present system. Keep the Presidency–perhaps only the Presidency, autocratic & absolute. But if you like, keep as well either the state governors or one house of Congress. Abolish the rest, it’s too many “representatives” for most of us to keep track of.
I’m a “good voter.” I show up & vote on election day for state & county offices. I often skip school board, so I’m not a very good voter.
But I try to read up on the candidates a little, & vote for those who seems like they’d be helpful.
But really, I don’t keep track of these people. I don’t really know what the difference in voting record between my city council members is, whenever I suffer through a city council meeting (twice as dull as dirt) I see a lot of unanimity. And my hometown has five citywide seats!
I have a county commissioner, a state assemblyman, a state senator, a Congressman, six individually elected statewide officeholders, & two US Senators.
And like most Americans, I notice the actions of the President of the USA more than of all the rest put together.
I have so many representatives, & yet my vote is nearly useless.
It’s not just that I live in a district that always goes two-to-one “conservative,” which these days means Reaganite GOP. My representatives are anointed by the party long before most voters know what’s going on.
No, it’s more than that. I have no impact on who will be Speaker of the House, & neither do you.
In what way is this responsible government? All these jokers just sneak through all the time!
Granted, it’s nice that there is a level between local & US politics, so that politicians can work their way up. It’s too bad it’s such crap. We pay attention to the city because it’s there & it’s us, you know? We pay attention to the nation because it’s sovereign. I’m pretty sure the state government in my state is mostly ignored.
And that’s dangerous.
Maybe when we abolish the states, one should have to work in the (federal) civil service to get the experience to run for Congress.
I understand that checks & balances are there to stop bad things from happening. But are legislators any good for this? The agencies that actually stopped Bush’s illegal “War on Terror” behavior were military lawyers & federal courts. I couldn’t vote for any of them. And we as a nation are grateful for these courts, even though they’re utterly unaccountable: It’s politically impossible to impeach a judge.
If the effective checks & balances aren’t ones we can vote in, & the ones “we” “vote in” are so numerous that most of us just let them continue, rubber-stamping the incumbent on election day, what’s the point?
First, you can’t abolish the States, period. To do so would require approval of 3/4 of the States at minimum, and the governments of those states are the ones who get to approve or disapprove, it wouldn’t be state-by-state referendum.
Secondly, if you really think tyranny would be better, then move to a despotic country. Live there for a few years and see if you like it better than the United States.
Singapore has very good standards of living and is a very despotic country, give it a try. Large parts of China have very high standard of living, and China is despotic, give it a try.
I would normally not answer a question in GD by telling someone to “go see for yourself” but when the question is honestly “wouldn’t tyranny be better than having Federalism?” I’m sort of stumped as to how else to disavow someone of the notion. No offense, but it starts out from a position of ludicrousness so I don’t know of a “non-ludicrous” way to answer it.
I’ll also add that if the first example of “checks and balances” you think of is lawyers slowly eroding the President’s warrantless wiretapping then you don’t have a very complete concept of American government.
I think you’re missing my point. I’m not talking about lifelong rule, but limited-term autocratic power. In other words, giving Americans the government they seem to think they already have.
But hey, strip all the legislatures down to unicameral, & have legislative elections by party list, & I’ll be more than happy. I can vote for the Democrats, the Republicans, the Teas, the Libertooties, whomever. I’m for representation; I’m for responsible gov’t. But individual district-based legislators that vote party-line anyway aren’t good representation.
Yeah, well it might start as limited-term, but what makes you think they would voluntarily step down? After all, in this time of emergency, we can’t afford to…
I don’t believe you have established that last part to be true. If you start with a false premise, you can’t expect the conclusion to be true.
Because one of the decisions he might make would be to make sure that there would not be a new president in four years.
Democracy is frustrating; it’s like trying to get twelve four-year olds to agree on where they want to eat lunch. And certainly our current system is so improvised from what was originally passed in 1787 that one often feels it’s long past time to start over. But inept as our system is, almost any alternative would be worse.
If I understand the point of your post correctly, it’s that we have lots of (theoretical) democracy but virtually no influence where it really counts. I don’t know if there is a good answer in a continent-wide nation of nearly 300,000,000 people almost all of whom are dependent on modern technology and economy for their survival. But saying “let’s just elect a dictator” isn’t the answer.
Actually, yes, to a certain extent. Bill Clinton didn’t have autocratic powers, which is what you are proposing. Bill Clinton could be impeached (which he actually was) by Congress. Bill Clinton could have been removed from office by Congress, if warranted.
Actually, in terms of effective representation, we have too few. One representative has an average of 650,000 constituents. Of course, the smaller states have a smaller ratio, since they have 1 rep per their entire state population, which can be smaller than a single average district (f’rex, Wyoming has a state population of 435,000 (+ or -)).
But increasing the size of the House in order to make Congressional response to constituents more granular would make the House impossible to run. The whole thing’s a compromise, not ideal in any direction.
If anything, concentrating power in one entity’s hands means all the graft and corruption in government gets concentrated on one teat. I think people underestimate how important it is that graft and corruption have to work on all kinds of different levels.
Depending on what you’re trying to do, you have to get municipal, county, state, federal officials in your pocket.
I’m actually confident that right now we’re at what is possibly an all time low in terms of public corruption. I’m also confident that sure, some low level officials at the county and municipal level are easier to corrupt and their corruption less interesting and less reported than higher level corruption. At the same time, I think the existence of so many different layers of government makes it much harder for corrupt factions to sway over a huge part of government authority.
The problem with systems like the absolute monarchy in France was that it created a whole industry of people who did nothing but bribe and corrupt high level officials at Versailles, it basically gave all of the profiteers and corrupt types a big target to shoot at.
I don’t want it to seem like I’m advocating increased layers of government solely because I think it makes it harder to effectively corrupt the whole beast, but I do think that’s something to keep in mind. (And like I said, I think corruption and graft are at all time lows in America, I also think both are more or less “features” of a representative democracy and can’t ever be totally eliminated.)