No it isn’t. On the contrary, if anything it’s easier in a smaller government where there’s less manpower for oversight.
Not true at all. Any government big enough to function can easily be grossly oppressive. Being brutal and oppressive is easy and simple; it doesn’t require the kind of complex and nuanced activity that calls for a larger government. It just calls for thugs.
The POTUS doesn’t appoint everyone in the executive branch. His appointees don’t, either. Most federal employees, including the ones involved in the IRS kerfuffle, are career civil servants. Those guys used to be accountable to the President; thanks to the Pendleton Act (and rightly so), they’re not anymore.
So what do you expect Obama to do? He can’t fire any of these people until they’ve done something wrong.
It’s an uproar because they were caught, and they were caught because the large, mostly apolitical government apparatus involved outed them. The system worked.
Really? What’s the voter turnout for commission elections in your county? How about for mayor of your town? The bigger the government, the more incentive voters have to be involved and the more democratic it is.
Well, that’s just nonsense. There’s a whole herd of them infesting Capitol Hill that are accountable to the public, at least in theory. Last time I voted, I seem to recall having a whole list of positions I was asked to help fill.
I don’t think so. Nazi Germany, Cuba, and North Korea all have or had pretty small, streamlined governments and are or were pretty oppressive.
So with our large government, we have a situation where some IRS agents asked some groups for information which they had every right to ask for. None of these groups were adversely affected. I think there are many solutions out there in search of a problem.
I think you are making too much out of a slip of the tongue. He’s trying to defend Obama and he did so by saying something that he probably doesn’t really believe.
Now, I certainly think there are good arguments for making the government smaller, but this isn’t one of them.
So your position is that the President can be held accountable for the performance of the government under his watch?
If so, then no, it’s not a good argument to shrink government.
However, many here are making the opposite argument and handwaving away the fundamental problem with it: the fact that a government that cannot be controlled by elected officials is an unaccountable, antidemocratic entity. If they don’t want to do anything about that, that’s fine, but they should never use the argument that activist government is fine because it’s accountable to the people. They’ve just argued that it is not.
Like if their boss says they’re doing a “heck of a job”, you mean?
I can imagine two possibilities:
Do you agree?
Do you know what they call the type of government where the leader has absolute control of the government?
Absolutely. The President, as head of the executive branch, is responsible for the executive branch. But again, limiting Presidential rebukes only to elections is a copout. Democracy involves more than just elections. A poorly performing President will, and should, lose political capital.
What I’m calling for is simple. For elected officials to be responsible for the government they run. If that’s impossible, then the government has to be shrunken to save democracy, given that an unaccountable government is antidemocratic.
Not absolute control. Responsibility and accountability.
No-absolute control. To suggest that the leader of a country be punished for anything the government does wrong without giving the leader absolute control of that government is asinine, no matter how large or small the government. To suggest that the government be somehow be shrunk to a size where this could be possible is equally asinine.
What the hell is an “activist government”?
So basically you’re okay with a democratically unaccountable government.
When did the topic of this thread change to “Non sequiturs”?
There’s also impeachment. But ultimately you’re left with two choices – remove the president, either immediately or at the end of his term, or don’t remove the president.
What middle ground do you propose for holding the president accountable? Docking his pay? A stern lecture? Nagging talking heads on cable networks? Oh wait, that last one is real.
Since when do conservatives want small government, anyway? Most of them seem to be in favor of expanding the power of the states. State and local government is big government: Much of the role of the federal government is to keep the big government in check.
adaher - Are you as certain of your logic in this thread as you were of your logic about the skewed polls leading up to the last election?
Any government will be partly unaccountable. Otherwise, it becomes a patronage system. You can’t exercise government functions without functionaries who are insulated from politics.
That’s part of the OP. If the government is beyond our elected officials control, such that they cannot be expected to take responsibility for it, then our government is unaccountable. True or false?
There’s more to democracy than just voting and impeachment. When a President is doing a bad job, the public and Congress tend to tune him out.
That’s why the President is scrambling. He knows he doesn’t have to worry about impeachment or an election, but he does worry about his agenda and his place in history.