>Why would any president not commit crimes to hold power and then need to keep it within his allies to prevent his prosecution?
It hasn't worked. Trump's chances of holding power would have been greater working within the system. He had his 9/11 moment with COVID and chose to squander it.
I do agree that the executive office has too much power. For a nation that prides itself on having spilled blood to avoid monarchy, The US seems to really want their President to be King/CEO In Chief of the entire government, rather than simply being the head of one of three equal branches of government. The Presidency simply should not be as important as it is.
I think that I would prefer the President have a single six year term, after which they can never hold the office of President or Vice President again. Then at least they would have to spend half of their first term campaigning for a second term. Presidential pardons and executive orders should also either be done away with or should require Congressional approval.
That said, it is surprising how many checks have worked. Most of the chaos Trump has really wreaked has been outside the system, with a band of loyalists willing to help him undermine it. But he's been stopped within the system numerous times, from repealing DACA to getting his wall built to forcing American companies to to his bidding to sending the military in to Portland. He couldn't even get the Supreme Court to rule in his favor over his election lawsuits, and he specifically stacked it for that purpose.
So yes, it's not the best possible timeline, but it's also not the worst, and let's not forget that Trump is a symptom, not the disease. If they had managed to drag Nancy Pelosi bound and, no doubt beaten, out to the gallows and hanged her for whatever imaginary treason, the whole crowd would have cheered it on.
That's the bigger issue American needs to deal with, the effect of two centuries of glorifying and romanticizing the archetypes of the stateless cowboy and revolutionary patriot, and normalizing the pretense of the white American right wing being the just inheritors and righteous executioners of American culture and liberty. And no, I don't believe that and America's desire for Presidential strongmen are at all unrelated. Many, many people have pointed out the stark difference between the government's response to BLM protests in Washington and the Capitol riots. That's also not unrelated.
The real checks and balances we need to work on are societal and cultural. Government is an expression of culture. We got Trump because we wanted Trump. We got chaos and dysfunction because we wanted to throw a brick through the window of the establishment. We got violence because the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrants or whatever. We fear BLM more than we fear neo-nazis because the former threatens the status quo far more than the latter. We'd hate Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton less than we would if they were men.
Maybe at some point we should stop looking for faults in the stars and start looking at ourselves?
It hasn't worked. Trump's chances of holding power would have been greater working within the system. He had his 9/11 moment with COVID and chose to squander it.
I do agree that the executive office has too much power. For a nation that prides itself on having spilled blood to avoid monarchy, The US seems to really want their President to be King/CEO In Chief of the entire government, rather than simply being the head of one of three equal branches of government. The Presidency simply should not be as important as it is.
I think that I would prefer the President have a single six year term, after which they can never hold the office of President or Vice President again. Then at least they would have to spend half of their first term campaigning for a second term. Presidential pardons and executive orders should also either be done away with or should require Congressional approval.
That said, it is surprising how many checks have worked. Most of the chaos Trump has really wreaked has been outside the system, with a band of loyalists willing to help him undermine it. But he's been stopped within the system numerous times, from repealing DACA to getting his wall built to forcing American companies to to his bidding to sending the military in to Portland. He couldn't even get the Supreme Court to rule in his favor over his election lawsuits, and he specifically stacked it for that purpose.
So yes, it's not the best possible timeline, but it's also not the worst, and let's not forget that Trump is a symptom, not the disease. If they had managed to drag Nancy Pelosi bound and, no doubt beaten, out to the gallows and hanged her for whatever imaginary treason, the whole crowd would have cheered it on.
That's the bigger issue American needs to deal with, the effect of two centuries of glorifying and romanticizing the archetypes of the stateless cowboy and revolutionary patriot, and normalizing the pretense of the white American right wing being the just inheritors and righteous executioners of American culture and liberty. And no, I don't believe that and America's desire for Presidential strongmen are at all unrelated. Many, many people have pointed out the stark difference between the government's response to BLM protests in Washington and the Capitol riots. That's also not unrelated.
The real checks and balances we need to work on are societal and cultural. Government is an expression of culture. We got Trump because we wanted Trump. We got chaos and dysfunction because we wanted to throw a brick through the window of the establishment. We got violence because the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrants or whatever. We fear BLM more than we fear neo-nazis because the former threatens the status quo far more than the latter. We'd hate Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton less than we would if they were men.
Maybe at some point we should stop looking for faults in the stars and start looking at ourselves?