A Ruling Party

The United States, for much of its recent history, has not had a ruling party, that is to say, a government where the President and the Congress are from the same political party. This situation arises from the manner in which we elect officials to represent us. We often speak of a separation of powers when all we are really talking about is the enumeration of duties in the Constitution for the various branches of the government. The Constitution does not say that the President is independent of the Congress or the Judiciary, it merely lists his duties. The same occurs for the Congress and the Judiciary. The Constitutional language for the Supreme Court does not give the Court the power to determine the constitutionality of laws. It merely describes the Court as a court of original jurisdiction for certain of it cases and as an appeals court for' others both, subject to the Congress for the limits of its jurisdiction. The House of Representatives can impeach the President and bind him over to the Senate for trial. Thomas Jefferson, when he was President wanted to clean out the Federal judiciary through impeachment. The Congress is the dominant part of our government and when push comes to shove gets its way.

The Constitution gives the Congress the legislative authority for our government. The Congress makes the laws. The Congress has the power of the purse and the war making powers. Tax laws originate in the House of Representatives since that is the only body of the Federal government that represents the people. We are a republic. The people are the sovereign and they share power with their elected representatives. The Senate is elected by a direct vote of the people of the State they represent (which was not always the case), but that is it, they represent not the people but the State. The President is elected by an electoral college to carry out the will of the Congress. He is to faithfully execute the laws which are passed by the Congress. He has no legislative authority. He can issue orders but only under laws giving him the authority to do so. He is the executor and the Commander-in-Chief. He executes the laws. He is the chief executive officer. If he breaks the law, Congress can fire him. The President does represent the people. The House of Representatives represents the people.

In the beginning of the republic, the man who got the most electoral votes was the president and the man who got the 2nd most votes was the vice president. Aaron Burr was elected Vice President to Thomas Jefferson's President and caused Jefferson no end of grief, since they couldn't stand each other. This problem was solved by electing the president and vice president as a team. Both are elected at the same time for their respective offices and there can not be a circumstance where the vice president is from a different political party than the president. When President Nixon and Vice President Agnew resigned, rather than face impeachment and criminal prosecution, the Democratic Congress elected a person from President Nixon's party to succeed him. Campaign politics at the level of a congressional district is very different from the politics of a presidential campaign. At the local level people know each other and the mad-dog-political-TV-attack ads are not nearly as effective. The Congressional district is too small for mass hysteria to be a dominant factor in voter preference. At the State level, as with Jesse Helms in North Carolina Senate campaign, mass hysteria works, as evidenced by his last minute blitz with a race baiting ad. At the national level the communication is so diffuse and the voter so far removed from the candidates that almost any kind of mass hysteria tactic has an effect. Will we ever forget Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance?

The President of one party and the Congress of the other is not a check and balance system. The present situation permits the most outrageous behavior on the part of the Congress and the President with no consequences for either.

Our present national debt is a good example among many. President Reagan asked for reduced taxes and increased spending and the Democratic Congress gave it to him. Presidents Reagan and Bush added a net of 3.5 trillion dollars to the national debt in the course of reducing taxes and increasing spending. To be sure Reagan bullied and threatened and used extreme coercion to get his way, but a Congress elected by the people, gave in to a President elected by an electoral college. The President dictated a legislative proposal and the Congress gave it to him. Reagan was enormously popular and his threats were real. He also had a contingent of Democrats, principally from the South, who supported him above their party—the bollwevils. The Reagan and Bush administrations, and their relationship to the Congress, are characterized by factionalism, sectionalism, sectarianism, and partisanism. Hardly a recipe for ruling the nation in a beneficial or enlightened fashion.

The main thrust of Reagan-Bush is to change government not run it. And by running bellicose administrations, which engage the Congress in a hostile political fashion, promotes the strife that promotes change. In a fundamental way, these administrations have altered the way many citizens sovereign view the central government. By calling into question the role of the Federal Government and by disparaging and hampering the way in which the Federal Government works these Presidents have convinced large numbers, of the citizenry that the Federal Government doesn't work. And by now that may be true.

President Bush by running a spectacular foreign policy program, complete with two shooting wars, has taken his popularity rating into the stratosphere. His domestic agenda is nonexistent and his rating in the polls for his domestic effort is far less than his foreign policy. He is considered a shoo-in for reelection, although, as of this writing, he has not formally announced his candidacy for re-election.

Prominent in the discussion about the presidential race is the lack of candidates on the Democratic side and the lack of a Democratic agenda. This is an apples and oranges discussion since the Congressional parties are not organized to produce presidential leaders, or to deal with national policies but to get congressmen elected. The Presidential party is most effective when there is a president of that party in the White House. In past years the losing presidential candidate of the losing party of the last election was considered the titular head of the party. That doesn't seem to be the case today. The president as the spokesperson for his party has a much bullier pulpit that the Speaker of the House who is nominally considered an important (but not the only) leader of the party. The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee is just a hired hand, not an elected official.

A ruling party would be assured if the House of Representatives as the only elected representatives of the citizens sovereign were substituted for the electoral college and the candidate were selected from among the Representatives. This would substitute the visible House of Representatives for the invisible electoral college. This proposal is not far out of line of the Constitution for the Constitution provides that if the electoral college cannot decide upon a candidate, or the vote is tied, the election will go to the House of Representatives. Also in the Virginia Resolutions there was a provision for the legislature to elect the chief magistrate, so it can be assumed it was seriously considered as an alternative when the Constitution was hammered out.

Having the legislative body elect the chief executive is frequently called a parliamentary system. The most famous parliamentary system we know is the British Parliament and that sits in a government with an individual as sovereign, the Queen. I am happier differentiating our government, where the people are the sovereign, from a monarchy. I would rather we called such a system, if it applied to our government, a republican system, since it relates to the power of the people and their elected representatives. Because of the nature of our Presidency, our present government is more imperial than republican. A minority president, by the use of the veto, can require legislation to have a 2/3 majority vote before he will sign it, since that is what is required to override a veto. If the majority party in the Congress does not have a 2/3 majority then the president can work his will, imperiously. If the House elected the President it would greatly reduce the imperial nature of the presidency, since the president would always represent the majority party. It would greatly increase the prestige of that body and the Congress as a whole, since a member could be elected President. A republican system of government would make the government as a whole much more accountable to the voters.

An election for president in the House of Representatives could not be influenced by a Willie Horton ad or by waving the flag. There would be other influences to be sure, but they would not be the influence of mass hysteria. In such a republican system there would never be any doubt about a ruling party. The majority party of the House would elect the President, of previously determined stature, and that would be that. The President would always have a ruling majority and the buck would rest squarely with the ruling party. In such a system it would not be necessary to pack the Supreme Court with partisans to accomplish an agenda that can not pass muster in the legislature. Congressional elections would be transformed, if the House elected the President. There could a tendency for the party in power throughout the nation to be voted out if they did badly and retained if they did well. Getting rid of the president would mean getting rid of the party that elected him and that would mean a change in the Congress first and then with the presidency. The rule of the Federal establishment would be by one party at a time and the a change would mean changing ruling parties, not just a few people at the top. The party as a whole could be held accountable and throwing the rascals out would mean the whole party. There would be ample evidence to judge the government and the people could make up their own minds based on performance not on histrionics, propaganda, or attack ads.

The majority political party of the House or Congress could solve the problem of a Congressional political party engaging a minority Presidential political party by adopting such a republican system on their own. If the Democrats in the present House of Representatives were to elect a "shadow president," who would be the chairman of a policy caucus and a policy committee (create one if necessary), by vote they could establish their "presidential" spokesperson. The spokesperson would be an elected member of the House and therefore a person of the people. He/she would have considerable merit to be so esteemed by colleagues. The shadow president could function in exactly the same way that the leader of the opposition functions in the British Parliament.

The shadow president would have access to the information forthcoming from the relevant Congressional committees and the Congressional Budget Office and in fact would be in a position to make policy calls with relevant data. The shadow president would be privy to the information for the Defense Establishment, the Intelligence Community and Foreign Affairs committees and would have the relevant data from those sources on which to base military and foreign policy judgements. Together with staff donated by relevant committees the shadow president could formulate an alter native budget based on "presidential" considerations.

As a member of the House the shadow president would also have information from the executive branch, the Comptroller General, the Inspector General, and the Congressional Research Service. When the President gave the State of the Union address, the shadow president could do the same the next day, in the House. When the President made a partisan announcement the shadow president would be available for reply. When the majority party occupied the White House, the shadow president would dissolve. A minority party with no leader in the White House could do the same thing.

Such an arrangement if successful in the "bull of the woods" environment of the House would provide a mechanism for coping with the presidential political party when the majority Congressional party did not occupy the White House. Such an arrangement would be a true check and balance situation. If this were tried and found useful, it might pave the way for replacing our present imperial presidency with a republican presidency and a true republician form of government.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1991
Institute for domestic Tranquility