I’ve been thinking about all the years I taught the “Intro to American Government” course at state universities in Vermont, Mississippi and Montana - often two classes per semester.
I always began by saying that “The American government was designed by its Constitution not to work. It continues to operate as planned.”
I always got a laugh.
Then I’d say that since then, we’ve made things even worse – like limiting Presidential terms so that, in the last two years of every second term the President is a “lame duck” unable to use his authority effectively. In effect, a six year Presidency is interrupted after the first four by what amounts to a recall vote.
We’ve trivialized the Presidency – and that’s not Donald Trump’s fault.
Many hoped this election would break the “glass ceiling” by electing a woman president. And I don’t doubt that Hillary Clinton could have handled the job.
But the Presidency is far too important to be decided on the wings of symbolic gestures. It’s about nuclear war, global warming and unspeakable poverty within a gluttonous society - not about making us feel good about ourselves.
Some argue that we sacrificed President Obama on the altar of our own racial guilt. He had zero executive experience and we asked him to take over the most difficult executive position on the planet before he was ready. Now many whisper his was a failed presidency - a charge that reeks of hypocrisy.
He’s experienced now, of course - but unfortunately we took away our chance to elect him to a third term.
So we might want to think about dumping the 22nd Amendment. When an FDR comes along and we want to stick with him we ought to be able to. Surely it was a good thing we allowed ourselves to reelect him in the crisis years of 1940 and ‘44.
We should also think about removing many issues that are more properly local from the agenda in Washington and on the President’s desk. Today’s electronic capacities are inherently de-centralist – just as the old technologies were centralist.
Someone once described Hitler as “Genghis Khan with a telephone” leading me to wonder if Hitler’s death camps could’ve stayed hidden for long with today’s connectivity.
And of course, we need to trust ourselves – because after all, who else is there?
