Politics : Drifting towards autocracy

Drifting towards autocracy

What is it about? How our country is becoming polarized, incapable of practicing democracy, that the Chinese system is more stable (though unworkable here), that we will split, that maybe democracy does not scale with technology, that it requires time to deliberate.

Signing Statements => Executive Orders + Presidential Memoranda => National Emergencies

I read recently that, “The US thinks in presidential terms," said University of Notre Dame lunar expert Clive Neal. "China thinks in decades." That was not always so important. Kennedy started the moonshot and it was fulfilled by Nixon and continued through Nixon, whether or not you believe we landed on the moon. That is only three presidents but during our last three presidents we have had three different programs to get us back to the moon or just into space. There are few things anymore that both parties can agree on: war, Wall Street, and Israel.

Rove intentionally kept votes close, maximizing partisanship. I don't remember why he wanted to do that. It killed any spirit of compromise. Rove thought Republicans would control the government. Instead presidents have trouble enacting their agendas through Congress and so resort to other methods.

Bush and Obama vetoed bills far less than previous presidents. Both twelve times. Clinton vetoed 37 bills. Bush had a Republican House for most of his time in office but a Senate for only half. Obama lost the House in 2010. They were dealing mostly with divided government but did not resort to the veto. Was Congress less active? That was a criticism of Bush, or noted oddity, his lack of vetoing. Trump has not vetoed. Does this signal that they see Congress as less important? That they will do as they please with signing statements and executive orders? Obama had two vetoes up to 2015 and ten more after the Senate switch to Republicans. That makes sense but what does that say about checks and balances? What does that say about bipartisanship? Bush similarly only had one veto while his party controlled Congress (the stem cell bill).

In lieu of vetoes, Bush would often use a signing statement.

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-threat-of-bushs-signing-statements/
Since 2001, President Bush has objected on constitutional grounds to more than 500 provisions in more than 100 pieces of legislation – a number approaching the 575 constitutional statements issued by all of his predecessors combined.
Presidents have used signing statements since early in the republic. But the character, intent and volume have changed since George W. Bush became president.
Note they did not make the same argument for Obama's executive orders, that the character and intent had changed.
The president has not simply objected to an overall law – he has said flatly that he will not enforce, or will use his own interpretation, for specific provisions of the laws. And, of course, he has not vetoed a single one of the bills to challenge Congress either to override the veto or to rewrite the law to fit the president’s concerns. Nor has he turned to the courts to adjudicate the constitutionality of provisions he believes are over the line.
this White House has advocated and pursued the most executive-centered conception of American constitutional democracy in contemporary history. Its reading of the inherent powers of the presidency, especially on matters of national security, has gone largely unchallenged by a supine Congress and a deferential judiciary.
Many people have pointed out that Congress has long ago ceded its power to declare war to the executive branch.

Only specific executive orders caused any outrage, not an overabundance of them.
Bush's use of signing statements were actually an issue during the 2008 campaign and he only issued 37 of them, compared to Bush's hundreds. David Addington is blamed for the emphasis on those.
Instead of signing statements Obama leaned on Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda and the use of regulations to bypass Congress.

Hyper-partisanship makes Congress cling to party and president. As government involvement in economy and society increases their scope of regulation increases, thus the ability of the executive to bypass Congress increases.

Now we may have governance by national emergency, not that it is entirely new. What might be new is that it could start replacing the legislature like signing statements and executive orders have done. Our system of government might have assumed national emergencies would be declared in good faith, not because Congress would not act.
The perpetual war footing has had a striking lack of examination. Under the National Emergencies Act — a post-Watergate law intended to rein in presidential emergency powers — the president needs to renew the emergency each year or it lapses. But Congress is also supposed to review each emergency every six months. It never has.
Presidents have declared scores of emergencies over the past 40 years, dealing with everything from the Iran Hostage Crisis to the Swine Flu. More than 30 of those national emergencies remain in effect — and Congress has never reviewed a single one in the history of the National Emergencies Act.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/permanent-emergency-trump-becomes-third-president-renew-extraordinary-post-9-11-powers/661966001/

Tuesday, President Obama informed Congress he was extending another Bush-era emergency for another year, saying "widespread violence and atrocities" in the Democratic Republic of Congo "pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/22/president-obama-states-of-emergency/16851775/
Does anybody believe that anything that happens in the Congo is a threat to the United States?

Bush and Obama and then Trump often used executive orders rather than going through Congress, maybe a result of an increasingly polarizing country unable to compromise, maybe because it was Karl Rove's plan. But I don’t think Rove thought long-term beyond some vague hope of perpetual Republican dominance which never happened.

Are shutdowns and threats of shutdowns becoming more frequent? No.

Bush used signing statements more than any president. Obama used executive action more than any president since Truman. Trump has continued that trend. A Washington Post article claims that Obama was just being transparent by including his memoranda in the Federal Register when he wasn’t required to but they didn’t point out that had he not published them then they would not have had the force of law. Maybe Trump won't use national emergencies more than other presidents but he is using them differently.

Charles Sumner was thrashed on the Senate floor. It is not so much the polarization as the inability to compromise. As they lose that ability they lose their purpose and become irrelevant—which was happening anyway, I think, as technology moves faster than their ability to legislate.

It has been pointed out that people simultaneously complain that there is too much polarization and the parties are the same. It does seem that no matter what, Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex are provided for.

Are republics out-of-date? Do they require too much deliberation? A slow republic works fine in the age of sailing ships but everything moves faster now. While you deliberate others act. Maybe we need a more powerful executive and maybe we are getting that. National emergencies are a matter of taste and probably much more powerful than signing statements and executive action.

Various pictures showing increasing polarization follow:





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