In all seriousness if the US were any comparable parliamentary democracy every news channel would have a countdown clock anticipating him losing a vote of no confidence and being removed
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You'd have to rewrite the whole constitution, it deliberately splits up the powers between House, Senate, and Executive. I do prefer Westminster-style parliamentary systems myself: tend to get more alternation of power and less divided/gridlocked government, and you can dump a real turkey quickly.
I don't. Our system is based on an indigenous one that is much more egalitarian. Our problem is subsequent attempts to graft a parliamentary system on top of it. We were never meant to have political parties. Parties are toxic, and parliamentary systems are based on them.
The problem is that too many people want a daddy government to fix everything, and it can't. We have to do the work of building community that includes people who disagree with you. Establish comon facts, baselines. Different for each region too. (Yay federalism) As long as we don't, bad guys win.
It's definitely not copying their colonizers, right? Going with what the colonized are familiar with instead of looking at indigenous, traditional systems from where they are?
Since the Citizens United decision, you can build community all you like but billionaires are going to funnel tens of millions of dollars of TV ads through a SuperPAC to tell low-information voters your lovely community candidate is a pigfucker. [ps they also bribed SCOTUS to get that system].
All this tells me is you don't know much about US history, esp wrt to SCOTUS, how social action works, or what it means to build community. Or math. How many billionaires are there that are registered to vote?
I don’t see how, unless you believe there was some sort of conspiracy. People collaborate and form alliances to get things done. People are tribal. Humans are humans.
Precisely. The big problem is having one person who is the leader of the country in the first place. It's just no longer workable with the modern admin state.
Replace the President with a small executive council.
Call it whatever you want, but we also need to avoid the failure mode where a nominally non-unitary executive is controlled by one guy who also controls the legislature, a problem Israel and Hungary have encountered to their great misfortune.
Trump has the GOP on lockdown because he can't be removed without crippling the party. Which is a presidential system feature, intensified by Trump's vindictiveness
Agreed. Contra Sasho's point, in a Westminster system you receive ultimate power over government in exchange for receiving a cabal of plotters who can legally Ides of March you any month of the year.
It's also very difficult for a Trumpian outsider to grasp ultimate power in the first place.
In terms of whether Trump in particular has the party on lockdown, there are very few governments where the executive has less control in a nominal trifecta, and with Trump acting increasingly bugshit, centrist Rs are going to start rebeling.
In all seriousness if the US was a proper parliamentary democracy there is no way a convicted felon & rapist would be elected to office, let alone President.
Good thing we instead have a system where Congress basically gets to pick their voters and thus face no repercussions for letting this idiocy happen on their watch.
The only time in the whole of US history that a switch changed the majority was Jim Jeffords in 2001, so it's more a theoretical possibility (like 67 votes for impeachment) than a thing that might happen.
Need to flip 3 in the House, or 4 in the Senate, on current numbers. But they did a big purge after J6 with all elected GOP pols having to go through an X-ray machine and any with a detectable spine were primaried out or death-threatened into subservience. Probably won't happen.
The power in controlling all three branches and the potential for possible SCOTUS appointments is worth more to the Republican Party than whatever this will all result in apparently.
That's probably more concerning as there's no set term limit for the existence of a political party.
With Republicans in Congress/Senate he’ll never ever moved. Democrats should stop blaming each other. The blame lies with Republican corruption and lies. Fight the biggest problems first( something that affects most people) so you can get support.
In a parliamentary democracy, with a healthy majority, a government can pretty much do what it wants. If the courts find something illegal, just pass a law saying it's legal.
No that's wrong because most parliamentary democracies have codified constitutions. Britain is just one of the few that does not, hence why it is the UK that is called an 'elective dictatorship', not all parliamentary democracies.
It depends which parliamentary democracy you're referring to, because in most it isn't possible to have a healthy majority. If you're talking about the UK specifically, then just recently Boris Johnson found out that he couldn't do just as he liked. Nor Liz Truss.
i used to think the parliamentary way of voting out a government on a whim seemed precarious but boyhowdy have the last twenty five years changed my mind
I would not be sure about that. Parliamentary democracy does not ensure bravery. Yes, Liz Truss lasted a short time, but her party fucked around for a long time. They still are living with Brexit, the biggest self own until whatever we are doing now.
I already saw somone with a letter from their propane supplier raising the price 25% to cover the tariff cost. People are going to notice that fuckery very quickly.
The current crisis is showing why Parliamentary systems are clearly superior to Presidential ones.
Even a semi-presidential system like France where the President appoints the Prime Minister and sets policy priorities but the government relies on supply and confidence of Parliament is superior.
The French moving from a parliamentary republic to a semi-presidential system and us moving from a strong presidential system to a semi-presidential one, meeting in the middle, would be amusing.
Sure, I saw the US system as always semi-presidential with the pres just being that powerful because he's chief exec of an unreasonably dominant country for much of the twentieth century, so the second part of your post was confusing
Well I suppose technically we moved from a semi-presidential system, because Congress had a lot of power, but over the course of the 20th century the presidency has become more and more powerful because Congress has delegated many of its powers to the president. So now we are strongly presidential.
In France the president can dissolve the assembly once a year, he can also fire his PM and remake the govt as many times as he wants, in the US Congress is completely independent from the president and can stop his high-level appointments
Because the US constitution makes the President and executive independent of Congress as legislature.
In a parliamentary system, the executive is the cabinet collectively, led by a Prime Minister/Chancellor/Premier, and the cabinet relies on the confidence of the parliament for their power.
A parlimentary system works like this:
Imagine the president was a figurehead who spent their time opening new hospitals etc.
Meanwhile the speaker of the house runs the day to day of government and the entire cabinet is made up of representatives. So the house can "fire" the government at any time.
Because our Constitution, unlike Parliamentary systems, has chosen an independently elected President/VP.
The remedy here is impeachment, and (like a no confidence vote) requires that legislators used some backbone and independent judgment, instead of "whatever Big Boss says is fine with me."
Considering we are currently have a giant excrement crisis (due to the EU telling us for years our legal exceptions would run out and our government coalition just ignoring that) any chance we can send the USA some bulk carriers full of cow shit?
That’s how it would go down in an actual parliamentary democracy but a government comparable to the US would be more like 3 raccoons in a trench coat, two of whom have no clue what’s going on and the other has rabies and wants to eat the first two
The framers of the Constitution actually wanted a parliamentary system; they just didn't know how to do it because parliamentary systems didn't really evolve into existence until the 19th Century.
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For a full ass month.
Replace the President with a small executive council.
(Speed-running the Roman Empire here)
It's also very difficult for a Trumpian outsider to grasp ultimate power in the first place.
That's probably more concerning as there's no set term limit for the existence of a political party.
https://bsky.app/profile/vermontgmg.bsky.social/post/3lh4uoe3gkk2s
Even a semi-presidential system like France where the President appoints the Prime Minister and sets policy priorities but the government relies on supply and confidence of Parliament is superior.
In a parliamentary system, the executive is the cabinet collectively, led by a Prime Minister/Chancellor/Premier, and the cabinet relies on the confidence of the parliament for their power.
Imagine the president was a figurehead who spent their time opening new hospitals etc.
Meanwhile the speaker of the house runs the day to day of government and the entire cabinet is made up of representatives. So the house can "fire" the government at any time.
The remedy here is impeachment, and (like a no confidence vote) requires that legislators used some backbone and independent judgment, instead of "whatever Big Boss says is fine with me."
Sigh
A mediocre parliamentary system beats a "good" presidential system.