Not sure if you mentioned it, but Trump's presidency ALSO resembled that "figurehead government by shadow committee of competing underlings" scenario you intoned would be so bad about a second Biden admin.
I think a damning thing (for Biden) is that a competent replacement-level Democrat could easily prosecute this criticism about Trump.
> But I think we can say that its advocates—and they have innumerable Republican counterparts supporting Trump despite their awareness of his manifest unfitness—seek something like government by the party, with the president as a symbol and figurehead. They got that, in fact, to some degree in Trump’s first term. Trump perforce staffed his administration with a variety of established Republican Party figures, and relied on the GOP leadership in Congress for his legislative priorities. In a host of policy areas, Trump’s presidency was relatively normal for a Republican: he appointed conservative judges, cut taxes, cut regulations, tried to cut people off from health insurance, etc. He yelled at and insulted our NATO allies, but he didn’t pull out of the alliance—in fact, he provided Ukraine with more military support than Obama did. He stayed on the reservation much more than many people expected, myself included, in part because, when all else failed, his most erratic instructions could simply be ignored.
Every President will be surrounded by powerful people energetically pushing their agendas. That is a good thing.
The bad thing is when the President can no longer be expected to cope with them.
In case of Trump that fear indeed existed because of the relentless narrative from the establishment, included the media, that Trump is a Russian asset, irresponsible, self serving, uninformed, and unaware of best practices in running the executive. Despite this pressure, Trump effectively fought for his course, firing people and putting himself in the center of all issues he found to be of high public interest.
Biden on the other hand appears managed by an amalgam of powerful party leaders, donors, and media executives, which being obscure can bear no accountability, but can grow in power.
Noah, your mistake is that Biden is acutally able to BE the president, as he has demonstrated in his first term. The problem is that he is not able to PUBLICALLY PERFORM the role of president due to his advanced age and probable Parkinson's. and therefore might lose the elecction and drag the down- ballot candidates down with him. I think he needs to withdraw from the campaign and the Dems need to ask themselves which ticket would stand the best chance of deeating Trum and the MAGA GOP. I think something like Whitmer/Warnock fits the bill. DRAFT BIG GRETCH!
> If the head of the executive is effectively non-functional, then where is the locus of accountability for bad decisions? And if there is no such locus, and everyone’s individual incentive is to collude in avoiding that accountability, what forces a correction?
Isn't this just an argument for monarchism? Or, to use the phrase of a certain brilliant yet toxic scholar, "the executive unbound"?
I'm not a monarchist, but technically that's only true of absolute monarchies. Under the British and Polish-Lithuainian monarchies, the monarch was accountable to parliament, and could be overruled -- and in the case of Britain, even overthrown. One might argue that SCOTUS and the federal civil service more closely resemble a situation of unaccountability and permanence. This is not to say that this is necessarily bad: there are good reasons these were set up this way. There were also good reasons for monarchy, which the author (inadvertently, I assume) put forward.
I guess my point isn't so much that things should be one way or the other. If anything, I think the idea that there needs to be a single locus of accountability is overrated, relative to conventional wisdom.
The concern is that our executive is not set up to be run as a committee. This means that accountability is displaced from the actual decision makers which then act with impunity. Who is to stop the Joint Chiefs of Staff the next time they argue for a preemptive strike as they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
God is punishing the United States by having all of our values transmute into their opposites. The party of Christian morality already gave up Christian morality. It makes sense that the party trying to save democracy will have to give up democratic accountability in their quest. We are under chastisement.
The Democrats' argument will always be that the potted plant is better than any Republican administration. As long as voters continue to fall into that trap, the Democrats will have no incentive to pursue any sort of popular policy. On the contrary, they will only continue to test the boundaries of how far right they can drift and how much they can alienate their base.
Not sure if you mentioned it, but Trump's presidency ALSO resembled that "figurehead government by shadow committee of competing underlings" scenario you intoned would be so bad about a second Biden admin.
I think a damning thing (for Biden) is that a competent replacement-level Democrat could easily prosecute this criticism about Trump.
He did mention it:
> But I think we can say that its advocates—and they have innumerable Republican counterparts supporting Trump despite their awareness of his manifest unfitness—seek something like government by the party, with the president as a symbol and figurehead. They got that, in fact, to some degree in Trump’s first term. Trump perforce staffed his administration with a variety of established Republican Party figures, and relied on the GOP leadership in Congress for his legislative priorities. In a host of policy areas, Trump’s presidency was relatively normal for a Republican: he appointed conservative judges, cut taxes, cut regulations, tried to cut people off from health insurance, etc. He yelled at and insulted our NATO allies, but he didn’t pull out of the alliance—in fact, he provided Ukraine with more military support than Obama did. He stayed on the reservation much more than many people expected, myself included, in part because, when all else failed, his most erratic instructions could simply be ignored.
Every President will be surrounded by powerful people energetically pushing their agendas. That is a good thing.
The bad thing is when the President can no longer be expected to cope with them.
In case of Trump that fear indeed existed because of the relentless narrative from the establishment, included the media, that Trump is a Russian asset, irresponsible, self serving, uninformed, and unaware of best practices in running the executive. Despite this pressure, Trump effectively fought for his course, firing people and putting himself in the center of all issues he found to be of high public interest.
Biden on the other hand appears managed by an amalgam of powerful party leaders, donors, and media executives, which being obscure can bear no accountability, but can grow in power.
Noah, your mistake is that Biden is acutally able to BE the president, as he has demonstrated in his first term. The problem is that he is not able to PUBLICALLY PERFORM the role of president due to his advanced age and probable Parkinson's. and therefore might lose the elecction and drag the down- ballot candidates down with him. I think he needs to withdraw from the campaign and the Dems need to ask themselves which ticket would stand the best chance of deeating Trum and the MAGA GOP. I think something like Whitmer/Warnock fits the bill. DRAFT BIG GRETCH!
Yeah, I'll take government by committee over Trump any day.
That was an easy one.
> If the head of the executive is effectively non-functional, then where is the locus of accountability for bad decisions? And if there is no such locus, and everyone’s individual incentive is to collude in avoiding that accountability, what forces a correction?
Isn't this just an argument for monarchism? Or, to use the phrase of a certain brilliant yet toxic scholar, "the executive unbound"?
Monarchs can't be held accountable (impeached). Let's work to make certain we retain that right.
I'm not a monarchist, but technically that's only true of absolute monarchies. Under the British and Polish-Lithuainian monarchies, the monarch was accountable to parliament, and could be overruled -- and in the case of Britain, even overthrown. One might argue that SCOTUS and the federal civil service more closely resemble a situation of unaccountability and permanence. This is not to say that this is necessarily bad: there are good reasons these were set up this way. There were also good reasons for monarchy, which the author (inadvertently, I assume) put forward.
I guess my point isn't so much that things should be one way or the other. If anything, I think the idea that there needs to be a single locus of accountability is overrated, relative to conventional wisdom.
The concern is that our executive is not set up to be run as a committee. This means that accountability is displaced from the actual decision makers which then act with impunity. Who is to stop the Joint Chiefs of Staff the next time they argue for a preemptive strike as they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
God is punishing the United States by having all of our values transmute into their opposites. The party of Christian morality already gave up Christian morality. It makes sense that the party trying to save democracy will have to give up democratic accountability in their quest. We are under chastisement.
The Democrats' argument will always be that the potted plant is better than any Republican administration. As long as voters continue to fall into that trap, the Democrats will have no incentive to pursue any sort of popular policy. On the contrary, they will only continue to test the boundaries of how far right they can drift and how much they can alienate their base.
Marianne has been saying this for a while now. https://marianne2024.com/