“An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”—Jefferson’s Notes as quoted by Madison in Federalist Papers 48.
Today’s post focuses on the ‘design flaw(s)’ in the US Constitution. It turns out, again, that the system of checks and balances is no such thing. And the reason it is no such thing is because an energetic presidency may overpower the other branches and slide the whole ship of state into a species of despotism (in the technical sense of arbitrary government).
Some libertarians may feel vindicated by the previous paragraph, but it is quite notable that public libertarianism has imploded during the last decade. (About that some other time more.) My own view, which is not original with me, is that the underlying problem is not the size or extent of the government (these may be problems, too), but that the American presidency combines too many functions in one office/person: (i) head of state; (ii) leader of the government; (iii) head of the executive branch/administration; (iv) leader of the party, including fund-raiser in chief. This understates the problem because some American presidents can shape prosecutorial power and parts of the judiciary through a spoils system; and have law-enforcement or trade-policy be directed at partial ends. (And so on.) Since America is still the global imperial power, I don’t mean to deny some of the attractions of this way of proceeding.
When 19th-century liberals (French and English Victorians) contemplated this evolving edifice, which was, of course, not yet reshaped by WWI and the New Deal, they understood the risk of elected despotism and advocated for the separation of the first three of these functions by advocating for a (A) constitutional monarch, who could be a source of (theatrical) unity and be the ‘dignified institution’ of the polity; in particular, the monarch could fill the affective space that a demagogue or cult of personality might otherwise fill. A prime minister who would (B) be politically accountable to fellow politicians and the voters for securing the common good and who could be removed by a majority in parliament (including his/her own party) or by the voters in a general election. (C) A minister of the interior or a high-ranking civil servant who would run the civil service with considerable independence from (A and/or B). (D) A leader of the ruling party who could serve in government or parliament or stay outside of elected office altogether. A very good book on the underlying nineteenth-century analysis is Parliamentarism: From Burke to Weber by William Selinger (Cambridge University Press, 2019; see also Vincent Ostrom (1991) The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration, 2nd ed, pp. 123-124).
The design flaws were also noticed by influential American theorists. For example Woodrow Wilson (eventually the 28th President) was steeped in the nineteenth-century Victorian liberal literature. So, it’s no surprise that his Congressional Government, which was first published in 1884 (which was originated as his dissertation in political science at Hopkins) quite lucidly, but understatedly, diagnoses the problem of usurpation by the presidency. His account (see this post) is especially notable because he argued, first, that after the American civil war, power had shifted from the States to Federal Government; and then second, — echoing an argument found in David Hume — that the natural tendency of the American system of government is to concentrate power in the Congressional leadership.
However, third, Wilson also explicitly recognized in the first chapter that if an energetic President wants to act in “discretionary” fashion then there may be no effective check on his power until “all the harm is done.” And even then, a pliant court may provide the presidency with the veneer of legality after the fact.
Wilson’s book went through many editions (I relied on the 15th) and was incredibly influential until the middle of the twentieth century. Now, it’s possible, of course, that readers thought that Wilson was mistaken in all of this. Or perhaps some thought that the 22nd amendment had solved the political problem that Wilson had diagnosed.
But Wilson’s diagnosis was by no means unique. The thought of Vincent Ostrom (1919 – 2012) is undergoing something of a revival because contemporary neo-liberalism is being reshaped by intensive engagement with the Ostroms’ ‘Bloomington-school’ not the least Vincent Ostrom’s articulation of polycentrism and bottom-up experimentalism (see this post; this one; and this one; and on the significance of Dewey here.) One of the key texts is his (1973) The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration. (Hereafter: Intellectual Crisis; I quote from the second (1991) edition. That’s salient as we’ll see below.)
It is standard in the reception of Ostrom’s Intellectual Crisis to see it as offering a clear alternative to Wilson’s “paradigm” for the “science of administration.” The Kuhnian language is self-consciously in Ostrom (and this fits a wider trend in his sources that I diagnosed back in the day in scholarship; the language of “crisis” is also intended to evoke Kuhn’s account of paradigm change). And the core of the paradigm that Ostrom opposes and wishes to displace is Wilson’s idea that “there will always be a single dominant center of power in any system of government; and the government of a society will be controlled by that single center of power.” (p. 24) And this seems right.
But the second claim that Ostrom attributes to Wilson (and wishes to reject) is more problematic, “the more power is unified and directed from a single center the more responsible it will come.” (p. 24) While this is true for Wilson’s analysis of what I have called the ‘natural tendency,’ Wilson explicitly recognized (as I have noted) that there could be dangerous exceptions. To the best of my knowledge, Ostrom never acknowledges this; rather he suggests that Wilson offers a merely normative theory in which the President owes ‘unquestioning Obedience to Congress’ (p. 119, Ostrom quoting Wilson.) But in the very same paragraph that Ostrom quotes, Wilson notes that in virtue of Congress’ inability to fire administrative officers, its power is highly attenuated.
Now, the original five lectures that generated Ostrom’s Intellectual Crisis were presented during the unfolding Watergate crisis, and there are allusions to to. But the explicit reflection on Watergate is in the sixth chapter that Ostrom wrote when he turned the lectures into a (1974) book. The second edition was updated modestly in light of Iran-Contra.
Now, for Ostrom Watergate reveals a systemic failure and that elements of despotism had already arrives Stateside. In reflecting on the hearings, he notes:
“Enemy” lists were formulated to include persons not in favor at the White House. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that Federal tax audits and criminal justice procedures had been used to harass persons actively opposed to the administration. Thin threads of evidence suggest that killings without due process of law had been practiced against Black Panthers. (p. 117)
Ostrom traces Watergate (and by implication Iran-contra) to a “long series of efforts to “strengthen” the executive and to center all control over Federal administration in the Executive offices of the President.” (p. 117) In Ostrom’s narrative this starts during the New Deal. By the first Nixon administration, there was a clear plan for “creating a legally omnipotent Executive.” In our time this plan is known as the ‘unitary executive theory’ and mostly associated with MAGA. (Recall these two posts on Russell Vought’s defense of it: here; here.) Importantly, then, the present presidential power-grab is itself the culmination of a century’s long effort that has been pursued by elements in both parties.* Arguably, this is the outcome Hamilton himself would have preferred.
Ostrom summarizes the cumulative effect:
When Presidential instructions become effective law, enactments by Congress will serve only as general statements of principles or purposes. In Hobbes’s terms, acts of Congress would then be mere “words.” Legislation will become “positive morality,” in John Austin’s language, not “positive law” (Austin, 1955). When legislation becomes positive morality, not positive law, Congress will be relegated to the performance of ceremonial functions in proclaiming moral platitudes about public life. (pp. 122-123)
So, whereas nineteenth-century liberals thought that despotism could be avoided only if the head of state was limited to the performance of ceremonial functions, that is, the dignified part (that’s a necessary condition not sufficient of course), the tendency of American political practice has been in the opposite direction, toward despotism (p. 126). My own view is that this is a predictable side-effect of presidential democracies by now.
Let me wrap up. Woodrow Wilson and Vincent Ostrom agreed on very little. In fact, Ostrom presents Wilson as holding an incompatible paradigm. Yet it is notable that both diagnosed the same set of dangers that the road to despotism by Executive fiat is quite clearly inherent in the constitutional edifice. Wilson quite clearly thought this was most likely to occur during wartime (presumably thinking of the civil war) or times of foreign crisis. (This echoes Hamilton’s analysis in Federalist 8: “It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.”) Ostrom clearly thinks the danger of despotism has been made ubiquitous after the great expansion of administrative functions, which make it impossible for Congress to practice effective oversight, and a number of judicial decisions which reinforce that.
There is a deeper point lurking here. We have been long told that the incentives of the U.S. Constitution create the structure and “devices” that will preserve liberty by having “Ambition…counteract ambition.” (Madison Federalist 51). Allowing that the constitution did aim for this, we have learned that such incentives are insufficient. Political agency (and so character) and wider norms matter, too. Much must happen to restore Constitutional government that is outside the province of the political philosopher, but the recovery cannot be completed, I fear, without a new constitutional edifice.
That opposition to the lawless Executive is organized around ‘No Kings,’ makes total sense, of course given early American history. But it also contains a risk: as one can read in 1 Samuel 8:5, a people may well desire a king. In fact, judging by the fate of contemporary liberal democracies, constitutional monarchy may well be a better outcome than sticking with the dangerous office of the presidency always tempted to be above the law.
- An earlier, revised version of this post was published (here) at DigressionsnImpressions.
*I don’t mean to be engaged in both-siderism; where the actual threat of despotism actually emanates from is pretty clear right now. But it would also be a mistake to neglect the joint responsibility of the leading factions of both parties.
{ 50 comments }
Tm 10.30.25 at 3:50 pm
“an energetic presidency may overpower the other branches and slide the whole ship of state into a species of despotism”
But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that a partisan Supreme Court and Republican Congress have voluntarily assented to, respectively are actively supporting, the despotism of Trump and his minions.
That is not to minimize the many design flaws of the US constitution but the main flaw is a very different one: that norms, laws and constitutions do not enforce themselves. They need people in positions of power to enforce them. If these people refuse to do so or even actively collaborate with unconstitutional power grabs, even a better constitution couldn’t prevent it. A better constitution might, however, have brought different people into power in the first place (especially regarding the SC).
alfredlordbleep 10.30.25 at 6:06 pm
*I don’t mean to be engaged in both-siderism; where the actual threat of despotism actually emanates from is pretty clear right now. But it would also be a mistake to neglect the joint responsibility of the leading factions of both parties.
As Gore Vidal was fond of repeating, there is one party in the USA, the party of property.
Much must happen to restore Constitutional government that is outside the province of the political philosopher, but the recovery cannot be completed, I fear, without a new constitutional edifice. [emphasis added]
(to revive an earlier CT thread where Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy was central) The Roman Republic’s co-consuls had an incentive for resisting declaring spurious emergencies because then they were required to step aside for a constitutional dictator. As CT readers may recall, such a dictator had strictly defined power, especially a term limit.
Elaborating—
The normal institution that decides that an exceptional situation exists (for instance, the Roman Senate) itself chooses the one who acts to address that situation (for instance, the dictator through the consuls). This has the obvious practical advantage that a collegial body of numerous members, like the Senate, commissions a smaller body, such as the consuls, to appoint a single individual to more expediently deal with an emergency than could a multimembered body. But there are more subtle ramifications as well: for instance, the initiating institution cannot so readily declare an exception that it might in turn exploit into an occasion for the expansion of its own power, emergency authority now lying in the hands of another institution. Moreover, given how jealous political actors are of the boundaries of their own authority, the fact that the normal institution decides to give up its own power in the first place will probably insure that a real emergency exists. This technique also helps guarantee that an agent is chosen who is sufficiently trustworthy to give that power back. . . .This external authorization on the execution of emergency powers works simultaneously as a kind of check on, and compensation for, the relinquisher of power who declares an emergency, as well as a potentially astute selection device for the executor on the exception. This is a technique neglected by even the more sophisticated formulations of emergency provisions in modern constitutions that is, however, worth reconsidering. None of the preceding is meant to suggest that constitutional emergency provisions will necessarily prevent the collapse of regimes in situations of crisis. Indeed we know from both the contemporary context of certain Latin American regimes and Schmitt’s own context of Weimar Germany. . .—
John P. McCormick, University of Chicago [in a publication now in my personal lost&found; to be continued]
Bad people are always the ultimate limit on crafty designs.
MisterMr 10.30.25 at 9:49 pm
IMHO the problem is more in the first past the post system, that creates a duopoly of parties.
Cheez Whiz 10.30.25 at 10:57 pm
All those checks and balances make it easier to prevent change, leading to a “life hack” of letting the President brute-force change, first with magical memos and EOs, then simply igoring inconvenient laws and court orders.
Congress has 1 power to compel a president, impeachment. Congress used the threat of it to get rid of Nixon, but Trump’s control of the Republican party is so complete it is out of the question. So yes, given an Executive unencumbered with concern for legality or public approval Congress is powerless if it chooses to be powerless which is the choice of this Republican Congress. This is not inevitable, and the big question is why the Republican party chooses to be powerless.
J-D 10.30.25 at 11:10 pm
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place checks on the power of somebody acting on behalf of another if there is no effective mechanism of dismissal. The harder it is to dismiss somebody from their position of power, the harder it is to restrain their power in any fashion. I have little power in my own job, but one of the things that makes me cautious in how I use the power I do have is the knowledge that dismissal for abuse of it is a serious possibility.
Existing parliamentary democracies function badly because, in practice, it turns out to be hard to dismiss Prime Ministers and Cabinets from office in those systems. Existing presidential democracies function much worse because, in practice, it turns out to be much harder to dismiss Presidents from office in those systems.
In the classical Athenian democracy, Themistocles, Pericles, Cleon and others like them rose to a position of effective leadership not because of formal offices they held but because the citizens attending the Assembly accepted what those leaders proposed; it was, then, much easier for the citizens to remove their leaders than in any modern political system; all they had to do was stop accepting their proposals to the Assembly. Their system had, of course, other faults, but not the fault of citizens having difficulty placing checks on executive power. It is not, of course, a system that can be adopted in political systems the size of modern ones.
It would be an improvement to any modern political system to make the holders of the most powerful governmental positions easier to remove from office than they are; it’s a more pressing issue in some systems than in others. It should be easier than it is, in practice, to remove the President of the United States from office.
JPL 10.31.25 at 7:34 am
It seems to me that the fundamental fact on the ground is that the people, i.e., those whose thoughts are mainly or even completely determined by conventional nostrums and age-old social norms that predate ethical understanding, for example the MAGA cult following, desire, and with fervent intensity, a despot, not so much a king, or at least not a constitutional one (regarded as less than satisfactory). Why do they so desire? (And what is the difference in the logical form of nostrums, as opposed to ideal principles?) They seem to be calling the shots just now. For the elite actors participating in the process of governance, all systems seem to tend toward plutocracy, and the single individual at the apex of the dominance structure embodies the willful individual aim toward which all intellectual resources are bent, namely to “get what we want”. Usually what they fervently desire is more money, without the possibility of getting enough. Again, where do they get this idea? The dark undertow of the blood-dimmed tide sometimes seems to overflow the rationally arrived at ethical structures of a house made of wood, including “religions”. I’m not a pessimist, in spite of what this judgment might sound like. There are positive forces that are stronger than these.
“Some libertarians may feel vindicated by the previous paragraph, but it is quite notable that public libertarianism has imploded during the last decade.”
I found this sentence interesting. Could a similar thing be said about the rather artificial “community” called “conservatives”? Why is this? I would like to see more on this.
Alex SL 10.31.25 at 12:01 pm
Good, if perhaps not enjoyable, read. I agree with nearly everything. My three thoughts in this context, and none of them new:
Yes, the US political system seems rather vulnerable to tyranny. Which is ironic, because as a high school student in Germany, I was taught how excellent its checks and balances are in comparison to the frail presidential republic of Weimar Germany. And even as a teenager I thought, wait a second, aren’t the USA precisely also a presidential republic with a massive amount of power concentrated in one person?
Yes, I find it extremely weird and problematic that several functionally different offices are united into one leader in most English-speaking countries. I would characterise them as (1) the party leader, who in a better-designed system would lead only the party as an organisation contesting elections and be elected by a party congress, (2) the leader of the faction of the party in parliament, who in a better-designed system would lead only the faction of the party in parliament and be elected by the faction members (i.e., members of parliament of that party), and (3) the candidate for prime minister / president / chancellor who in a better-designed system, and if elected by the people, is only the prime minister / president / chancellor and runs the government but doesn’t lead the party or the faction in parliament. Putting these three functions into one person’s hands is not only problematic from the perspective of having no checks and balances, it is also too much work for one human to do well.
And finally, all of that can be true at the same time as it can be true that no democracy, no matter how well designed, survives ca. a third or more of the electorate seriously wanting to turn it into tyranny. But the post at least strongly implies that too.
somebody who remembers the war powers act is flatly unconstitutional 10.31.25 at 7:36 pm
Good post. There are many spikes in it that lead in different directions. (“Public libertarianism”, l m a o, as the youths say.) However, I wanted to address that while the consolidation of power in seeming violation of the expectations of “checks and balances” has been consistent, it also, for the same reason, can be reversed at any time. Normie people become mystified when you show them the war power lies in Congress, not in the President. They have never lived in a time period when Congress has ever wanted to do anything with that power but mumble something mealy-mouthed about “authorizations” and write impossibly large off-budget checks. But this is simple cowardice on Congress’s part. It can be reversed any time a majority wants to actually assert power. The Republican shutdown is also instructive. They are sitting around moaning about not having 60 votes in the Senate, but that rule itself can be eliminated with 51. But even short of a shutdown, there are many things conservatives have wanted that didn’t make it. Republicans voted dozens of times to eliminate Obamacare permanently and throw thirty million Americans out of the health care system forever – they ran on that promise, were elected by the dozens on that promise, but ultimately decided they didn’t want to do it and did nothing instead. What happens when a Congress wants to do something? Well, they will change the filibuster rule and do it, as they did with judicial appointments. Similarly with Congress’s war power. They can just take it back any time they want to. All it takes is one Congress to have a legislature again. (The Supreme Court is another matter, we will permanently be ruled by the rapists and mentally stunted fanatics there until they die at the age of 110.) People talk about Nuremberg trial for ICE officers – a bit of a fantasy, but all it would take would be a Church Committee and a majority that actually wants to enforce itself on the executive. The paths are still there. It is the main antidote to my doomering to remember they are still there.
alfredlordbleep 10.31.25 at 11:04 pm
Of course, the Roberts Court created presidential immunity, a huge opening for the abuse of power.
encapsulated by:
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/legal/supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts-trump-united-states
This is with the opposite effect to the forces in play in the Roman Republic setup @2.
MisterMr 11.01.25 at 6:58 am
To elaborate on my post in 3: we see that there are many right wing populist parties in what passed for the economically developed world, and in my opinion the reason of this is the economic stagnation we are in.
If we then go to the cultural causes, there might be many, also when you see that the left Is the party of the highly scholarized, the right in many ways of the less scholarized; this and the effect of social media leads to two different echo chambers, and this leads to a situation that favours authoritarianism.
When we speak of political istitutions, what I think is most important are the ones that lead tò this ‘echo chambers, nothing in the middle ‘ situation.
When we speak of checks and balances, what failed was the Supreme Court that, while not totally subservient tò Trump, is strongly on his side, and the fact that he was not impeached. But It Is difficult to impeach a guy who apparently represents half of the nation without looking like cheaters, this is something that happened with Berlusconi too.
mw 11.01.25 at 3:33 pm
somebody @8 “But this is simple cowardice on Congress’s part.”
It’s political self interest. It’s easier to get re-elected if you don’t ever have to vote for anything that might make some segment of the electorate angry. So Congress has found it beneficial to pass general, aspirational laws and leave all the potentially problematic details to the so-called ‘independent’ agencies. The framers thought Congress would jealously guard its power, not find it electorally beneficial to shirk responsibility.
It’s possible we’re going to the Supreme Court put an end to that approach though — first with the ‘major questions’ doctrine and possibly next with overruling Humphrey’s Executor. The major questions doctrine means that Congress must be specific on major issues and can’t let the agencies make the tough calls. And overruling Humphrey’s would mean that agencies and their officers (and their rules) won’t be as resistant to democratic change. Congress may no longer be able to fob off law-making to the agencies with confidence that that those agency imposed regulations will necessarily survive the election of an opposition president and Congress.
LFC 11.02.25 at 12:35 am
mw @11 wrote:
overruling Humphrey’s would mean that agencies and their officers (and their rules) won’t be as resistant to democratic change.
In the present context, overruling Humphrey’s means that Trump and Vought and etc. will be able to continue taking their deranged, unlawful wrecking ball to agencies and members of their boards and commissions whose actions they don’t like, i.e., any actions that go against their conviction, or more specifically Vought’s conviction, that virtually any regulation of private enterprises is bad.
mw goes on about “democratic change” but Trump during the campaign lied and said he knew nothing about Project 2025. Once elected, it and its architect became Trump’s operational playbook. So Trump lied to the electorate about his intentions, and then Trump apologists like mw come along and try to claim that this is all about “democratic change.” That is nonsense IMO. Why mw continues to flog this line here is mw’s business, but I guess it shows that Crooked Timber is open to a wide range of views.
Btw what are notice-and-comment proceedings if not agencies gathering feedback from anyone with time and concern to comment on proposed regulations? Congress does not so much “fob off law-making,” as mw puts it, as lay out objectives that agencies are then charged with devising regulations to meet. Agencies are imperfect as are all institutions, but Vought’s deranged notion that they represent a “deep state” is far more dangerous than Congress’s occasional failure to be as specific in its directions as it might be.
Btw again, Congress specifically set up by statute the USAID. Trump, Musk, and Vought illegally dismantled that agency in one of the most brazen, disgusting, and morally obtuse acts by any President since at least the Watergate era, if not before. At least Nixon never illegally dismantled whole agencies. Neither for that matter did Ronald Reagan, which may be one reason one no longer so often hears Republican politicians turning him into a quasi-saint as they used to regularly do.
alfredlordbleep 11.02.25 at 2:13 am
“Parliament is supreme”. Let us count the ways. The critical proviso in all of the following—to override vetos supermajorities are needed. Where are they to be found? Nevertheless, let us count the ways.
—Daniel Schuman via Robert Kuttner, in The American Prospect
alfredlordbleep 11.02.25 at 2:26 am
correction:—Daniel Schuman via David Dayen, in The American Prospect
[italics & boldface added]
J-D 11.02.25 at 4:49 am
A Congress that really wanted to could find ways to check the Supreme Court, with sufficient imagination. I’m expressing no view about whether Congress should do any of the kinds of things I’m imagining, but they absolutely could.
John Q 11.02.25 at 7:24 am
I don’t think the problem is primarily one of design. After Watergate there were a lot of new checks on presidential power and until Trump, there seemed to be little risk of a dictatorship. But if you have a majority or near-majority willing to vote, repeatedly, for a dictatorial president and a Congressional majority of loyalists to that dictator, no system will help you. Sooner or later, the stars will align for dictatorship, as they have done in the US.
mw 11.02.25 at 10:31 am
@LFC @12 “In the present context, overruling Humphrey’s means that Trump and Vought and etc.”
Yes. But Humprey’s would remain overruled long past Trump. The current justices will generally remain long past Trump as well. The changes that are underway started before Trump and will very likely continue afterwards.
“but Trump during the campaign lied”
Oh no! Not a politician misrepresenting what they will actually do (and not do) after they are elected. Truly, this is uncharted territory we’re in here.
But a Trump apologist? Let me put it this way — I dislike Trump even more than I did Biden (neither of which could I bring myself to vote for), and outdoing Biden in terribleness takes some doing.
“Btw what are notice-and-comment proceedings if not agencies gathering feedback from anyone with time and concern to comment on proposed regulations? ”
Lol. Notice-and-comment proceedings merely throw a bit of sand in the gears and provide time for lawsuits to be filed to stop changes on the grounds that the provided pretexts are not legally sufficient. But no administration is truly gathering information that it might consider to change its approach. To think any administration is playing it straight with this stuff is naive.
But the point of my post was really not specifically about Trump. The OP was calling for constitutional restructuring. A lot of restructuring happened during the New Deal. Now some of that is now being undone. In neither case was it done through constitutional amendment, let alone a convention to draft a new one. It was (and is) being done through changing Supreme Court interpretations. Not idea, perhaps, but that’s the way things have been done around here for about a 100 years, and that doesn’t seem likely to change.
F 11.02.25 at 11:53 am
If the US were actually a dictatorship, the government would not be shut right now.
Tm 11.03.25 at 9:11 am
In Germany, the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic and how they enabled the Nazi tyranny, and how the Federal constitution was designed to avoid these weaknesses, are extensively taught in school. Chief among them was the emergency provision which gave the Reichspräsident near unlimited powers to suspend the basic rights and govern by decree if he invoked it. Now the Reichspräsident in 1933 was Hindenburg and he had been elected on account of not being a Nazi but he chose to use his power to enable Hitler.
Note that the US constitution does not have an emergency provision – whatever Trump may claim, there is absolutely no provision that allows the president to suspend any of the constitutionally guaranteed rights, nor does it allow him to override Congress and legislate by decree. That however doesn’t matter much if the institution tasked with safeguarding the constitution is stacked with fascists who fully support a fascist dictatorship.
The claim that the US presidential system is fundamentally at fault doesn’t convince me. It is after all no small feat that this system has worked fairly well for 250 years – longer than any other extant constitutional polity (with the possible exception of the UK, but that doesn’t even have a written constitution). The most consequential flaw in the US constitution is the poor design of the Supreme Court. There are many other flaws and I have no desire to minimize them. The constitution overall is anachronistic and petrified and really needs an overhaul, which is next to impossible short of a revolution. But focusing on these flaws is misleading. None of what’s happening is inevitable, it all could have been prevented and can still be stopped if the people who make up the existing institutions chose to actually follow the law and the constitution and do their damn duty.
The fundamental problem of US democracy is that a large portion of the elites, the people in positionas of power, have abandoned the ideas of liberal democracy and the rule of law. That was also true of the Weimar Republic btw. It is by no means clear that a better constitution would have prevented the Nazis from gaining power when the majority of the elites had ideologically abandoned the Republic. Even the best constitution doesn’t enforce itself. It depends on people.
somebody who is rarely the chill one in the room 11.03.25 at 3:27 pm
I took mw’s response at #11 to suggest that the elimination of administrative power pursued by the Supreme Court could ultimately work at odds with the desire to centralize power in the executive; not to praise the Supreme Court or their actions, but a theory for consideration. And I agree. One reason the government can’t do what the executive tweets it must is that the copper’s been ripped out of the walls. There’s like 4 department of justice lawyers left who have ever said their name to a judge; the IRS can’t audit Trump’s celebrity enemies because DOGE fired all the auditors and replaced them with Grok. They can’t even hire an artist to make their propaganda, they have to have the asskissing machine make it for them!
SamChevre 11.03.25 at 7:25 pm
I think there’s an important piece missing in this analysis from J-D (which I largely agree with).
In both cases, the challenge seems to me to be that there is no mechanism for democratic oversight of the bureaucracy. Or, to quote Yes, Minister: ” They are just called the Opposition. But, in fact, they are the opposition in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence.”
Tm 11.03.25 at 7:41 pm
mw: „The OP was calling for constitutional restructuring. A lot of restructuring happened during the New Deal.“
This is just a lie which this poster has served up before. It’s still a lie. The
New Deal was passed by Congress constitutionally. It had absolutely nothing to do with a repudiation of the constitution and this false narrative needs to be called out for what it is, a lie.
Tm 11.04.25 at 3:24 pm
J-D and Sam: “Existing parliamentary democracies function badly because, in practice, it turns out to be hard to dismiss Prime Ministers and Cabinets from office in those systems.”
Some, for example Italians (or more recently the French) might say that dismissing the cabinet often isn’t such a great outcome.
Making it easy to get rid of the government sounds like a decent check on tyranny – until you think about it for 5 seconds. Supposing that the government was legitimately elected, it should be allowed to do its job and to govern, until the next election when the people get to decide whether to keep it or not. What is crucial is that the government, while in office, respects the law, and can be effectively held to account by the courts, and that system guarantees free and fair elections. If those conditions are met, there is no need to dismiss an elected government. If they are not met, everything else becomes moot.
Tm 11.04.25 at 3:26 pm
I should say “can be effectively held to account by the courts and the parliament and a free and independent press…”
LFC 11.04.25 at 9:13 pm
A conservative-leaning commentator writing at SCOTUSBlog thinks the Court won’t actually overrule Humphrey’s Executor but will hold, w.r.t. the Federal Trade Commission at any rate, that today the FTC wields more “executive power” than the FTC as described by the Humphrey’s decision in 1935 — and therefore the Pres. is able to fire an FTC commissioner without “cause.” Zooming out from the technicalities, the Roberts Court seems on track to let Trump fire most agency members without cause, with the exception of members of the Federal Reserve Board.
Somebody @20 reads mw to suggest that “the elimination of administrative [i.e., agency] power pursued by the Supreme Court could ultimately work at odds with the desire to centralize power in the executive….” I’m not convinced. The question in these cases is how much power the President can exercise over agencies and the composition of their boards. Giving the President a freer hand to fire commissioners of most agencies does not work against “the desire to centralize power in the executive.” Rather, it increases the power of one part of the executive branch — namely the President — over other parts, namely the agencies. (In the presidential immunity case, Roberts, writing for the majority, said iirc that the Pres. is his own branch of government, but the point is that, however it phrases it, the Court majority is bent on increasing presidential power.)
J-D 11.05.25 at 12:35 am
Since members of the bureaucracy have less power than either Prime Ministers and Cabinets (in a parliamentary system) or Presidents (in a presidential system), it is less important that their dismissal from office be easy. Of course, their dismissal should be possible; in practice, it turns out that their dismissal is significantly easier than the dismissal of either Prime Ministers and Cabinets (in parliamentary systems) or Presidents (in presidential systems).
J-D 11.05.25 at 12:48 am
This is exactly the argument made by those seeking to increase presidential power and reduce checks on it.
Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. The ultimate means of enforcement against abuse of power, which will work if the others all fail and thus backs all of them up, is removal from power. A holder of power who genuinely can be dismissed will either respect other legal checks on their power for fear of being dismissed or else can be dismissed from power for failing to respect other legal checks on their power. If the person who holds power is legally irremovable, they can’t be effectively held to account if they choose not to be. Andrew Jackson didn’t say ‘The Supreme Court has made its ruling; now let them enforce it’, but if a US President did say that, there’s nothing the Supreme Court could do about it. A US President who could expect to be impeached and removed from office by Congress if they chose to defy a Supreme Court ruling would find that a motive not to defy a Supreme Court ruling; a US President who could be sure that Congress would never impeach and remove them could defy Supreme Court rulings with impunity if they chose.
JPL 11.05.25 at 7:55 am
As a response to our “current predicament”, the OP raises a lot of interesting questions, which are of two main kinds, familiar from the intellectual structure of scientific fields: 1) questions of “political engineering”, i.e., applied political philosophy, having to do with the practical task of designing an effective general structure of principles of governance; and 2) questions of political philosophy as a field of pure inquiry, attempting to understand and explain by causal analysis why particular problematic outcomes occur in reality, especially cases that show previous levels of understanding to be inadequate. In the OP, the discussion of Wilson and Ostrom exemplifies the theoretical aim (2), while the question of correcting the design flaws in the US constitution in particular exemplifies the practical aim (1). I just wanted to suggest that the problem of our “current predicament” is quite a complex phenomenon, and that it might be helpful to clearly identify specific problematic developments and try to figure out why they happened, and then put the findings together in a theoretically coherent way, having identified the “causal laws” of the evolution of political forms.
The first paragraph of the OP identifies one such problem, namely that the attempt to constrain the natural human tendency for agents to make policy decisions on the basis of physical power and lust for money, as opposed to rationality, by setting up a structural opposition of opposing incentives and purposes, which we call “the system of checks and balances”, has failed in its intent, since we now have a situation where the elected head of the executive branch, instead of “faithfully implementing the laws as passed by the legislature”, is able to impose its own contrary will on the legislature and nullify or contradict what the legislature might determine should be the laws, while the supreme judiciary has allowed itself, for some ungodly reason, to be subservient to the aims of the chief executive and to blatantly violate principles of jurisprudence in order to merely further the executive’s aims. This situation, which is usually called “despotism”, is a recipe for disaster. What are the conditions that have enabled it to happen? In that first paragraph at least, the only candidate for an explanation that I see is that the presidency may be “energetic”; but being energetic could be a good thing. So the question remains, what are the conditions that allow this imbalance to happen?
More specifically, what has happened is that a certain faction of the traditional Republican Party, made up of mainly unelected appointees of the civil service like Russell Vought, (and Stephen Miller) has been able to capture the policy-making mechanisms such that the executive branch can now implement policies that candidates for legislative positions would never be able to win on as their campaign appeals, but that realize long-standing desires of this faction of the Republican party, policies which they know are politically unpopular. (E.g., destruction of government agencies, making people’s health care unattainable, unnecessarily causing people experiencing hardship to starve, giving billionaires unnecessary tax breaks, etc.)
The only reason their policies can finally be implemented is that they are able to attach them to a chief executive who has a cultlike popularity with the voters, who hold the principle that what matters is not what the policies are, but only who implements them, their tyrant, not the other people’s tyrant. The popular tyrant uses his own popularity to effectively determine which legislators can win elections and which can’t, and thus imposes his will and his domination over them. A necessary condition is that the three main bodies of governance– house, senate and presidency– are held by the same political party: the possibilities of corruption that this condition opens up, especially when combined with the effective practical dominance of the legislators by the president, seem not to have been fully accounted for by the founders. So the ultimate determiners of the direction of government policies are these voters, except that the power to implement policies has been usurped by the rogue bureaucrats. It’s an unstable situation. I wanted to comment on other interesting ideas in the OP, but this preliminary point has taken me too much space to make, and I really don’t like to make long comments.
Tm 11.05.25 at 8:47 am
J-D 27 I dispute your characterization. But here’s a question. What mechanism, do you think, should determine when to dismiss an elected government? Your suggestion, it should be easier to dismiss the cabinet, is unspecified as long as you don’t explain who in your eyes should make the determination, if not the parliament (as is the case in most parliamentary democracies (*) ), when to dismiss the government, and how you suggest to make sure that bad governments are dismissed but not good governments.
() In parliamentary democracies, usually the parliament has the power, by majority vote, to dismiss the government or to force its resignation, and this also, as history shows, happens quite often. In some countries, the president or monarch has the power to dismiss the government. In both cases it’s unclear in what sense you think it’s “hard” to dismiss the government. It’s actually very easy for the president, or the parliament, to do so *if they want to.
J-D 11.05.25 at 8:56 am
It was Donald Trump, not the civil service, who appointed Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Stephen Miller as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and United States Homeland Security Advisor.
It was the people who were able to vote who put Donald Trump into the Presidency (this time), but they do not now have the power to remove him.
Tm 11.05.25 at 9:01 am
JPL 28: “The only reason their policies can finally be implemented is that they are able to attach them to a chief executive who has a cultlike popularity with the voters, who hold the principle that what matters is not what the policies are, but only who implements them, their tyrant, not the other people’s tyrant.”
Let’s not forget that while Trump does have a certain “cultlike” following, he is not and never has been popular with the people overall. He has, with the exception of a very brief period in early 2025, always (both in his first and second term) been unpopular, his approval has almost always been below 50% and much of the time he kept the record for least popular president. He has lost almost all important elections in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, and again in 2025 (yesterday), and is likely to suffer a massive defeat in the 2026 midterms insofar as free and fair elections will be allowed to happen.
Trump’s secret is that despite his general unpopularity, the elites like and admire him. That, and only that, explains how he was able to exert that much power, much of it illegally, und to implement so many deeply unpopular policies. It’s an immense and scandalous media failure that he has been portrayed as something like the personified voice of the people with a huge mandate to govern when all polls and election results (including his very narrow 2024 win) show the opposite is true.
It’s the elites, stupid.
Tm 11.05.25 at 9:11 am
Further to J-D: “Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. The ultimate means of enforcement against abuse of power, which will work if the others all fail and thus backs all of them up, is removal from power.”
If only there were a mechanism, like an election, which could have resulted in Trump being removed from office. It’s really unfortunate that the US constitution doesn’t provide for such a mechanism. /s
Removal from power has to be enforced, and if as you say the law isn’t strong enough to be enforced against a tyrannical government, who do you think will be strong enough to remove that tyrant from office? In fact Trump has been removed from office once, so the law was effective. But Trump and his followers then refused to accept the election result and tried to overturn it violently, and while unsuccessful, they got away with it. Trump could again be removed from office if Congress wanted to. He has committed so many crimes that any responsible Senator would vote to impeach him.
The problem isn’t that there is no mechanism for removal or that it’s too hard to do, the problem is that those whose responsibility it is to safeguard the constitutional order are not willing to do so. It’s not a problem that can be solved with a better constitutional design.
JPL 11.06.25 at 5:38 am
J-D@30:
“It was Donald Trump, not the civil service, who appointed Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Stephen Miller as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and United States Homeland Security Advisor.”
I know that Russell Vought and Stephen Miller were appointed by Donald Trump. I phrased the expression that odd way to suggest the irony of the Project 2025 people complaining about the “deep state” as consisting of subversive bureaucrats with a political bias and hidden influence in contradicting the will of the people and all that. “Civil service” is standing in for “deep state”. (Trying to avoid overtly sardonic remarks.)
“Ultimate determiners” in the sense that these voters are the ones who can effectively end the careers of candidates who are insufficiently Trumpist by defeating them in primary elections, and so they are the source of Trump’s power of practical dominance over them. Until recently (as indicated by yesterday’s election results), this unquestioning support was sufficient to permit the unfolding of the further mechanism of the undermining of the checks and balances constraint.
J-D 11.06.25 at 8:01 am
If you mean what mechanism would perform this function in a hypothetical constitution written by me to reflect my ideas, I can tell you, because years ago, as an exercise for my own amusement, I wrote a whole constitution to reflect my own ideas. But it’s of no practical relevance, because no country is going to adopt my pet constitution. If you are nevertheless really interested in knowing what my hypothetical pet constitution says, let me know and by all means I’ll tell you.
If you are asking about practical political activity, then I am not sufficiently expert in and well informed enough about the actual current politics of any country–not even my own–to make detailed suggestions for proposed changes. It is obvious that political leaders are, in practice, easier to remove in some countries than in others; it is also obvious that there are examples of countries where this has become harder and others of where it has become easier; so I don’t know why ‘Change the system so that removing holders of powerful positions from those positions becomes easier’ should be an impossible suggestion; in any country there are people better informed and more expert than I am for working out the details of changes of that kind that would be practical proposals in current circumstances.
In terms of practical proposals, I’m not suggesting that (in existing parliamentary democracies) this power should be formally vested anywhere else; but it’s clear that it’s easier in practice for the parliament to remove a cabinet (or a Prime Minister) in some democracies than in others, so the question ‘How could it be made easier in practice for the parliament to remove the cabinet (or the Prime Minister)?’ is a meaningful one. The fact that I don’t myself have the expertise to give detailed mechanical proposals for achieving this purpose doesn’t make the question less meaningful or less worth investigating.
In 2020 the mechanism of an election was available for removing Donald Trump from the Presidency and what’s more it was used for that purpose; but it’s not available now for the purpose of removing him from the Presidency, and neither in practice is any other mechanism.
History has plenty of examples of tyrants being removed from power, which demonstrates that it is possible; it has never or almost never been easy, and that’s the problem.
Rules don’t enforce themselves, and for that reason no set of rules can guarantee desirable outcomes; but it is manifestly not the case that the stated content of the rules makes no difference, and it follows that changes to the rules to improve them are possible in theory and may be worth considering in practice.
J-D 11.06.25 at 8:05 am
If you tell me that in practice, in the current state of US politics, proposals for amendments to the US Constitution are not a priority, I agree absolutely! It doesn’t follow that the idea of proposing amendments to the US Constitution will never be of any value.
J, not that one 11.06.25 at 3:15 pm
This sounds like a tautology. Elites are who has power, Trump has managed to steamroll the Constitution and the other branches of government and increasingly civil society as well, therefore the elites must like him.
The reality is that the civil society elites do not like Trump. Those who like him are those who would prefer a more authoritarian and hierarchical society than we actually have. (In places there’s more hierarchy than others; some of the elites in those places want to trample the will of others whose way of life is less hierarchical and replace it with their own preferences.) They’re willing to ignore the rules in order to take advantage of Trump’s apparent desire to make society more hierarchical in a way they think they can use. If you define “elite” as “someone who likes hierarchy,” sure, then you’re correct.
Tm 11.06.25 at 3:18 pm
J-D: “it’s clear that it’s easier in practice for the parliament to remove a cabinet (or a Prime Minister) in some democracies than in others”
Is that really clear? What is clear afaict is that it happens more in some countries than in others. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easier, in terms of legal requirements. For example it’s very easy for me to quit my job, there is nothing in my contract or in the law that would prevent me from doing so, and yet I rarely quit my job. Maybe because I wouldn’t find another job, maybe because I’m happy in my current job, maybe I’m too lazy to change jobs. In any case, changing contract law wouldn’t make any difference to whether or not I quit my job.
“If you tell me that in practice, in the current state of US politics, proposals for amendments to the US Constitution are not a priority, I agree absolutely!”
I’m not telling you that. I’m actually interested in the question you raised, namely whether it would be a good idea to make removal of a government from office easier, and it’s a bit disappointing that you made this claim without providing any actual argument for it. My suspicion is that you’re trying to solve the wrong problem. The real problem in the US at the moment is not an inability or impossibility but an unwillingness of a majority of Congress and the Supreme Court to safeguard the constitutional order. You originally stated that “there is no effective mechanism of dismissal”, but the mechanism exists and it’s effective. Republicans don’t want to use that mechanism. If the mechanism were “easier” to sue (in whatever sense), they would still not want to use it.
MisterMr 11.06.25 at 4:32 pm
@TM 31
“Trump’s secret is that despite his general unpopularity, the elites like and admire him.”
I think you’re wrong. If you look not just at the approve/disapprove rating, but at the “strongly approve”, you will see that he still has now a 32% strongly approve rating, something that Biden only had very early in his presidency; Obama also had low “strongly approve” ratings after a short period, though higer than Biden (same website).
The problem is that Trump has the “cultlike” followers who approve him whatever he does, and perhaps the most outrageous the action, the higher the approval.
Other more normal politicians (both Obama and Biden, but also traditional Republicans) IMHO care more for the “centrist” voters, so are more vulnerable to attacks, whereas Trump has the opposite strategy of using the extremists, who however are more politically active and galvanized.
From this point of view it is true IMHO that the problem is a large part of the population, though on the long term the question is also why USA voters are so much polarized (with righties more to the right than european righties, but lefties also to the left of european lefties).
I suspect most “elites” would favor a traditional republican if the could, even though many would probably back Trump VS someone who actually rises taxes so stick with Trump anyway.
There is also the question if the left could/should/will follow the same strategy.
J-D 11.07.25 at 1:00 am
I didn’t write that it was easier in terms of legal requirements. I wrote that it was easier in practice. In practice!
My point was, again, that it isn’t effective in practice. In practice!
When the US Constitution was written, many people assumed that the mechanism of having the President chosen by the House of Representatives from the candidates who received the most votes from the Presidential electors (note, if you go by the text of the Constitution and ignore what happens in practice, it’s not called ‘the electoral college’) would be routine. The people who designed that mechanism were comfortable with the idea of its being used regularly. By the time it actually happened in 1800, it was considered a serious problem, and the Constitution was swiftly amended so that the 1800 situation could not recur; but an amended version of the mechanism was retained, and when that one actually came into operation in 1824 it was again the cause of dissension. When the possibility of its coming into operation again is discussed, it’s almost invariably treated as anomalous and undesirable, but there’s no way of knowing that from the text of the Constitution; you have to pay attention to how things work in practice.
If you were giving a description of how American government works, would you omit all mention of political parties because they’re not mentioned in the text of the Constitution? If you were giving a description of how American government works, would you omit all mention of the filibuster because it’s not mentioned in the text of the Constitution? If you were giving a description of how Australian government works, would you omit all mention of the office of Prime Minister because it’s not mentioned in the text of the Constitution? That is not the way to give descriptions of how political systems work in practice. That would be like teaching somebody how to play chess without telling them anything about pins and forks, or about opening and endgame theory, because those things are not mentioned in the laws of the game, or teaching somebody how to play bridge without telling them anything about bidding systems because those things are not mentioned in the laws of the game–not sensible in practice.
I think I did, but in case it wasn’t clear I will expand on it.
If somebody hires a gardener to look after a garden, they can give the gardener instructions about how to do so, perhaps, for example, that insecticide is not to be sprayed to get rid of pests. But what if the gardener nevertheless contravenes those instructions as, for example, by spraying insecticide to get rid of pests? The employer can tell the gardener ‘Stop doing that’, but what if the gardener continues to contravene the instruction? Well, the employer can dismiss the gardener and hire another one to take their place; and the knowledge that the employer can do that creates an incentive for the gardener not to contravene instructions. A gardener who knew they could not, in practice, be dismissed and replaced would be more likely to contravene instructions and any other mechanisms available to the employer to control the gardener’s methods would be reduced in effectiveness.
If somebody hires a lawyer to look after their legal affairs, they can give the lawyer instructions, but what if the lawyer contravenes those instructions? Again, the employer can dismiss the lawyer and replace them; and, again, a lawyer who knew they could not, in practice be dismissed and replaced would have less incentive to follow instructions and any other mechanisms available to the employer to control the lawyer’s methods (perhaps, for example, by complaining to a professional association or registration authority, or even by suing the lawyer themself) would be reduced in effectiveness.
I can imagine that in the course of history there have been gardeners and lawyers (and others) who for one reason or another have not in practice been replaceable, or have in practice been replaceable only with extreme difficulty, and if there were then I expect it had an observable effect on the way they performed their functions.
The same analysis applies when a President or a Prime Minister is appointed to take charge of a country’s government. If it is impossible to remove and replace that person, then they will have little incentive, once appointed, to take account of the desires or the interests of the people of the country; and if it’s not actually impossible but still in practice extremely difficult, then they will have little more incentive. If it’s made easier in practice to remove and replace the holders of powerful offices, that gives them more incentive to take account of the desires and the interests of the people in the way they use that power, and that’s the democratic and the desirable outcome.
Reason 11.08.25 at 2:35 am
Tm – you noted the long period of stability of the US constitution with a hint if awareness of the US Civil War. Strange.
I would also note that in the last decades in Australia we have repeatedly seen Prime Ministers removed by their own party, and more recently have seen the same phenomenon in the UK. If the US was not a presidential system, would Trump still be in office, given the fear for their own seats that many in congress have?
To all, one thing that is strangely missing from this discussion is a simple question that should be asked of every democracy, is there a process that could see members of the current government prosecuted for corruption? Because if one thong is obvious about the Trump regime is obvious, it is that it is extremely corrupt.
mw 11.08.25 at 8:34 am
TM @ 22 ” It had absolutely nothing to do with a repudiation of the constitution”
Who said ‘repudiation’? I said reinterpretation. Yes, Congress passed a great deal of New Deal legislation, but I was talking about USSC decisions that changed the way US government operated. Those decisions substantially increased centralized federal power. One key case was Wickard v Filburn which turbo-charged the Commerce Clause and granted the Federal Government power to regulate pretty much anything and everything (because, of course, it’s always possible to come up with some argument why any activity, however local, could conceivably affect interstate commerce via some second, third, or fourth order effect).
Tm 11.10.25 at 8:11 am
MisterMr, you are using a different definition of popularity. You can do what you want of course but I don’t think your using a different definition makes me wrong. ThaT 32% of the population strongly approve of his fascist policies is bad enough but if far more people disapprove than approve, then by normal language use he isn’t popular.
J 36: “Elites are who has power, Trump has managed to steamroll the Constitution and the other branches of government and increasingly civil society as well, therefore the elites must like him.” You have it backwards. Trump hasn’t “managed” to steamroll the constitution, the elites (those that count) allowed him to steamroll the constitution because they like his fascism.
And “the civil society elites” do not actually have any power. They have none. The civil service has been purged and most positions of leaderhip have been filled with fascist cult members. Again this was made possible because the elites that count support Trump.
Tm 11.10.25 at 8:24 am
Regarding Trump’s popularity, another datapoint:
Trump and Hegseth booed mercilessly for 2 minutes straight tonight by Washington Commanders fans.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/11/bottom-up-top-down
One more point MisterMr. Obama and Biden both had high approval ratings at some point in their presidencies, higher than Trump’s. Both at some point saw their approval decline. It is a very common pattern. What is different is that none of them was ever idolized as the “voice of the people” by the mainstream media, none of them was ever said to have a massive “mandate” which gave them the right to do whatever they liked, despite their electoral victories having been far stronger than Trump’s. The media elites created this perception of Trump somehow being special. It’s pure propaganda. Amazing that you’d fall for it.
J-D 11.10.25 at 11:46 pm
In theory there are processes, of course, but they’re currently mostly ineffective in practice.
LFC 11.11.25 at 1:13 am
@Tm
When Trump first ran in 2016, he was opposed by almost the entire Republican establishment until it became clear that he was going to do very well in the primaries and could win the nomination. He was definitely not the first choice of right-wing donors like the Koch brothers. So in its initial stages, Trumpism was not mainly an elite-driven phenomenon. The mainstream media to some extent treated him as unserious and almost as a species of entertainment, which led to Trump getting a lot of free media attention. Some elites then got on board (because in electoral politics nothing succeeds like success).
Trump has consistently had the strong support of about a third of the electorate, many of whom see him as incapable of doing anything wrong. He combined this base in 2024 with other elements of the electorate to win. Some recent developments suggest that the latter elements, consisting partly of “swing” voters or self-identified independents, may be trending away from the Repubs.
Tm 11.11.25 at 8:50 am
J-D: “I didn’t write that it was easier in terms of legal requirements. I wrote that it was easier in practice. In practice!”
What you said initially was that it needs to be easy to dismiss a government in case that it “abuses its power”. This was written in a thread focused on questions of constitutional law and I read it in this context. You later added the qualification “in practice” without ever specifying what this really means. You used the term “mechanism”. Perhaps I’m a hopeless cartesian dualist but in my understanding, mechanism is different from volition.
I pointed out that it’s not enough to have a mechanism to remove a bad government: you also need the relevant players to actually want to do it. If the leaders of Congress are unwilling to remove a president despite him being corrupt and lawless, because they themselves are corrupt and lawless, then the problem isn’t the mechanism not being “effective”, it’s the power elites being corrupt and lawless. If the Supreme Court is unwilling to hold a lawless president to account, then the problem is not that the institutions are deficient (though they may well be), it’s that a majority of the justices are themselves corrupt and lawless. Saying that there is no effective mechanism for holding Trump to account is simply wrong, there are such mechanisms, and crucially it negates the agency and hides the responsibility of these elites.
The same critique applies to Reason 40: “is there a process that could see members of the current government prosecuted for corruption?”
You omit the fact that the Supreme Court in 2024 rules that Trump’s presidential actions are above the law, a ruling that practically all legal experts agree has no basis whatsoever in law or constitution. It is one of the most blatantly lawless rulings ever by a US Supreme Court. It’s not the legal process that is deficient in this case, it’s the agents who should be enforcing the law but refuse to do so because they themselves are lawless and corrupt.
LFC 45: “When Trump first ran in 2016, he was opposed by almost the entire Republican establishment until it became clear that he was going to do very well in the primaries and could win the nomination.”
Correct, but a few things have happened since 2016. I’m talking about the present situation. The GOP and the economic and media elites are, as of 2025, completely aligned behind Trump. That includes Congress, the Supreme Court, the owners of nearly all the mainstream media and social media and most of the richest men in the world.
Trump is and remains and always was exceptionally unpopular. The historical data should put to rest any doubt about this.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx
Tm 11.11.25 at 9:48 am
Also Reason 40: “you noted the long period of stability of the US constitution with a hint if awareness of the US Civil War. Strange.”
I don’t know why it is “strange” to point out how unusual it is that the US ocnstitution has survived even a civil war, as well as two world wars, not to mention various economic and social upheavals. I’m not aware of any other constitution having survived this long and this much change. Whether that’s a good thing is a separate question.
Tm 11.11.25 at 10:25 am
Reason: “I would also note that in the last decades in Australia we have repeatedly seen Prime Ministers removed by their own party, and more recently have seen the same phenomenon in the UK. If the US was not a presidential system, would Trump still be in office”
Were they removed due to (alleged) power abuse? And here’s a question, if a UK prime minister is really intent on creating a dictatorial regime and his party supported that goal, would then parliament remove him? And even if it tried, would it succeed if the prime minister were willing to defy the law?
Various presidents have been removed from office due to alleged power abuse. A recent case concerns the South Korean president Yoon Sok Yeol who tried to declare martial law and was promptly removed. Parliament (with the support of 204 out of 300 members) impeached him and the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment with a 8-0 decision. There is also an ongoing criminal prosecution against him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Yoon_Suk_Yeol
There is nothing in the US political system – neither legally nor “practically” speaking – that prevented the US Congress and courts to treat Trump in exactly the same way. It really seems as if people here are eager to deny the agency and reesponsibility of the US power elites for Trump’s lawless regime by blaming some unspecified systemic failure.
MisterMr 11.11.25 at 12:00 pm
@TM
“MisterMr, you are using a different definition of popularity. You can do what you want of course but I don’t think your using a different definition makes me wrong. ”
Sure, I’m not disagreeing on the fact that Trump is overall very unpopular. Where I think you are wrong is the idea that Trump is pushed up by “elites”.
My perception is that there are 3 moving parts:
The first is “elites”, meaning people with a lot of wealth, who in my opinion don’t like Trump very much, but will still vote him rather than a leftie; however the traditional low taxes/small government “reasonable” plan of the right now is an hard sell, because of the crisis of 2008, the ascent of China etc.. Thus the elites followed a plan of catering to the cultural right wing (or rather doubled down on this plan).
The second moving part is the cultural right wing, social conservatives, people who are a tad bigoted and conservative; many of these people are low income and low wealth, and the elites need their votes so they cater to these cultural identities, anti-intellectualism, liberals are all degenerate cosmopolitan cocktail sippers etc..
These people are the authoritarian followers, in the sense of Atlemeyer’s studies on authoritarianism. They are having a growing weight in the republican party, starting at least from Reagan (see the book Conservatives without a coscience, or Atlemeyer’s website and book.).
They are a tad desplicable, but certainly not the elite.
This is also reinforced IMHO by the fact that a lot of blue collar feel that dhe Dems became a white collar party, and perceive a big difference between blue collar and white collar, so the republicans can tap into that resentment (hence the big impacrt of scholarization in voting patterns).
The third moving part is Trump himself and his courtiers, who are fundamentally amoral assholes who realized they can get into power thanks to the cultural conservatives, who are willing to vote whomever is anti-liberal and in fact are a tad blind.
This is a game changer because while probably isn’t really a true believer, he is an asshole who is willing to do whatever to increase his power, and therefore he is going in a very fascist direction.
But this doesn’t mean that the elites want Trump, he is still a last choice for them.
Tm 11.12.25 at 8:02 am
MisterMr: If the elites didn’t want Trump, if he were only a “last choice for them”, they wouldn’t have supported his campaign with record amounts and unprecedented media manipulation, they would already have removed him, or at least have limited his power to that of a normal president. What cannot be denied is that the elites – the media elites, the oligarchs, the right wing establishment, Evangelical church leaders, GOP leaders, Supreme Court – treat Trump like they have never treated any other politician. Look at the media coverage that never scandalizes any of his many scandals, watch editors fire journalists that have displeased Trump, read one of the many Supreme Court decisions that could be summarized as “if Trump does it, it’s fine”, listen to his lickspittles heave praise on Dear Leader North Korea style, watch the oligarchs bow to his wishes, look at evangelical leaders touching him in prayer. All of this is the elites, not “the rubes”. (To be clear, not all elite fractions are behind Trump, but the most powerful are).
It is said that they are opportunists or they are afraid of him but it doesn’t make sense. Always rely on revealed preferences. Trump would have no power if they didn’t give him that power. They do it because they want, because they like what he’s doing (not necessarily every detail of it of course). To claim that rich and powerful people who literally treat Trump like a God Emperor “really” don’t like him and “really” would prefer a normie politician is nonsensical. It’s another form of denial.
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