America Should Dissolve the Presidency and Senate

Prior to the presidential election of 2016, a majority of Americans reasonably presumed politics would continue more-or-less as usual. After decades of frustrating yet rather consistent Neoliberal politics stretching back to the Reagan Administration of the 80s, wherein both major political parties seemed more like different sides of the same policy coin rather than ideological opposites, discontented populist wings within both parties were clearly growing in prominence. Yet, left-leaning progressives and rightwing nationalists alike remained unable to capture the majority of the vote from their respective sides, let alone coax enough moderates and independents in the ideological middle to win the White House. That all changed, however, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Since his ascension to the Oval Office, America's political discourse has been treading dangerously close to the edge of losing the democratic republic we hold dear. Sadly, our nation is likely to get even closer to this proverbial edge, or hurtle over it altogether, before we have a chance to pull ourselves back up and right the ship that is our country.

Since the ascension of the Trump Presidency in early 2017, nearly every aspect of the checks-and-balances system originally put into place by the Founders through the US Constitution has been tested. Being the second president in less than two decades (the other being President George W. Bush in 2000) to reach the office without winning the majority of American's votes, and brought in under a protectionist, nationalist mandate per his most loyal voters, Trump went about an unprecedented campaign to remake the executive branch. Attempting to bend much of the nation and world to his will rather than focusing on representing the collective will and restraint expected by the American People, Trump shocked and dismayed millions on a nearly daily basis. Trying to pack military leadership with loyalists, nearly breaking the nation's immigration system while tearing children away from parents and likely allowing illegal hysterectomies of detained immigrant women, remaking the Department of Justice with the likes of William Barr as Attorney General in an attempt to wield the power of the federal government as his own law firm, routinely violating foreign agreements and strong-arming allies and trade partners, ignoring our own military leaders advice in favor of capitulating to foreign dictator's demands and more are but a few ways in which the 45th President bucked tradition and weakened the standing of America.

Beyond his structural testing of governmental rules and norms, Trump left a long-term scar on the function of our government and economy. With Republican control of the Senate he appointed and filled a nearly unprecedented number of judicial positions, including three Supreme Court Justices which brought the political leanings of the bench into a conservative threshold not seen since the early 1900s. This legacy will last for decades as Trump's dangerously rightwing justices will remain a cancer on our judicial system until they pass away or retire. While Republicans also controlled the House in the early years of his presidency, Trump and his allies were able to push through one of the largest and most egregious tax reform bills in our history, largely forgoing actually tax breaks for the majority of Americans in favor of major enhancements in tax exemptions and deductions which can be claimed by large businesses and wealthy individuals. Turning his deceitful tendencies and lack of scientific acumen against the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump then mishandled the situation so badly he lost the support of nearly all but his most ardent constituents. After all of the lying, demagoguing, dividing and antagonizing, Trump then refused to acknowledge he lost the 2020 presidential election, tried to overturn the legal results, and instigated a march on the Capitol which directly led to an insurrection against the same, creating a immediate threat to the lives of America's federally-elected representatives.

Despite all of the above, a large portion of the American electorate wants Trump back in office, or at least someone like him. Sizable percentages of Republicans and Americans overall believe Trump's lies about the 2020 election, support greater restrictions in voting and encourage electing into office many more Trump-style candidates which will help make sure another "stolen" election never happens again. This isn't only terrifying, it's how republics die and autocracies begin. Rightwing American is now cozying up to autocrats such as Victor Orban in Hungary (even hosting him as a speaker at the CPAC Conference earlier this year), Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and regularly sympathize with Putin's arguments regarding his invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. Just this week, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by a man from California with a hammer after allegedly looking for the Speaker herself. The police stated they later found "a roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and zip ties from the crime scene". To say political violence and the threat thereof is escalating seems an understatement at this point.

Perhaps fortunately, there are ways America can reform our system to avoid such presidential excesses and popular threats to democracy. We can amend the Constitution, create new laws which restrain and clarify the power of the Presidency and executive branch, get big money out of politics, craft greater protections for voters and workers and so on, yet a patchwork approach has proven difficult to achieve and too easily hampered within the current, corrupted Constitutional system. Perhaps the system itself needs to change. This publication would advocate for something of a soft reboot of the American Republic, one wherein the Presidency no longer exists, the Senate is dissolved, the House is greatly expanded while eliminating partisan gerrymandering, and the Supreme Court has term limits and automated rotations on the bench. This would eliminate issues with executive overreach and the electoral college, do away with the imbalance of power and entrenched corruption within the Senate, prevent harmful regimes within the Supreme Court from holding power for decades, and dilute federal power amongst hundreds of representatives. This would likely speed up the legislative process, allow for a more democratic nation and make the rise of any autocrat incredibly unlikely moving forward.

First off, the Presidency has gained far too much power over the decades, and as Trump showed us, it's scarily close to being able to buck against the national will altogether. With the elimination of the office, the various department heads would be the highest-level positions within their respective fields. Appointed by Congress for set terms and required to be drawn from the civil servants within each department, America would effectively have an executive branch of experienced technocrats which perform the responsibilities laid out by the legislature. A refresh of the branch would be required, and many independent agencies would need to be brought under the wing of a executive department, yet with some renaming and fairly straightforward retooling, the branch would become much more malleable, stable and accountable to a greater portion of the electorate. The powers of the Presidency would be spread out and integrated into the powers of the various department heads as needed. For example, the Secretary of State would become the new Head of State, performing foreign functions, and the Secretary of Defense would become the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Switzerland remains a notable example of a national executive branch being managed very successfully by multiple leaders as opposed to one president or prime minister.

Next, the American Senate is a relic of a bygone era more concerned about the survival of the nation and the continuation of slavery. Part of a grand compromise to bring southern states into the new federal Union, the Senate has become not only remarkably unequal and undemocratic but has outlived its usefulness in our modern nation whose survival is not imminently at stake and wherein slavery has long been banned. During the first census of the US in 1790, it found the least populous state was Delaware with 59,094 residents, and the most populous was Virginia with 747,610. That's a difference of less than 700,000 people between the most and least populated states. Contrast that with today, where the population of Wyoming is roughly 576,851 while California hosts a population of nearly 40 million. The city of Los Angeles alone has over 3.8 million people, yet the whole state of California gets two Senators while the extremely rural Wyoming gets two Senators as well. If one were planning a system which would break the balance of political power in a modern democratic republic, they'd likely implement the American Senate. It still holds true in the US that land doesn't vote, people do, so it's time we enact a system which reflects this fact.

With the dissolution of the Senate, the House would take on expanded powers and responsibilities. More committees would be in order; judicial appointments, budgets, executive positions and legislation would all be approved through the House alone with no filibuster and no veto power from a President. Elections would still take place every two years, yet each representative would serve four-year terms, and no more than three terms in total. So, roughly half of the House would be up for reelection every two years, with federal referendums and relevant local/state elections included in each election cycle. The judicial branch would still rule on the legality of laws passed, yet the process would be much more streamlined. We could even implement an elected Federal Council to act as a permanent watchdog over Congress (perhaps 5-7 members from roughly equal-population districts spread out like time zones across the US), setting payrates, accounting for spending, launching investigations and enforcing ethics rules as needed. Paired with ranked-choice voting which would encourage the success of third-parties, the People of America would be granted a whole new level of government transparency. We'd be better able see our government for what it is and does and vote accordingly, as opposed to the modern state of two-party-rule where the side in power blames the other for blocking their agenda in a nearly never-ending game of partisan stalemate.

The House would also be locked into hosting a representative for every roughly 500,000 citizens, leading to a legislative body which would be approximately 664 members strong by today's population count. Drawing of legislative districts would be done every five years alongside a census (using modern technology to facilitate this) by third-party commissions who are not given any information regarding nor allowed to act on any racial, ethnic, or partisan boundaries for the districts. Alongside automatic voter registration, banning corporate and large donors from campaigns, compulsory voting, ranked-choice voting, accountable journalism, greater labor protections, broad democratic referendums which would allow voters to show their political priorities and other similar tweaks to our existing system, this rejuvenated America would have one of the most dynamic, democratic and accountable governments in the world.

While many details would need to be worked out, with a strong set of Constitutional rights and freedoms still enforced by the judicial branch and voters as a whole, power so diluted yet so simplified would allow for Americans to truly feel their voices are heard and priorities are met. Alongside a reformed judicial branch with term-limited Supreme Court justices and automatic rotations onto the bench from the appellate court circuits, we would be well on our way to better securing the rights and liberties handed down to us for generations, and doing the same for generations to come.

References:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

2) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/06/viktor-orban-cpac-far-right-us-trump

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Salman

5) https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-charged-assault-and-attempted-kidnapping-following-breaking-and-entering-pelosi-residence

6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)

7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census

8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming

9) https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Forecasting/Demographics/Documents/E-1_2022PressRelease.pdf

10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicameralism

11) https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unicameral-system.asp#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways%3A,and%20Sweden%20have%20unicameral%20systems.