Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Should the Presidency be a special case? The President isn't supposed to be "leader of the government," just an administrator of one of three co-equal branches led by the people.

The president shouldn't be any more popular or powerful than a Senator or representative in Congress, arguably they should be less so because Congress writes the laws and controls the budget. But the way American politics works, driven by populism and celebrity worship, you'd think the President controls the entire government like the CEO of a company.

Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders - a President shouldn't have the authority to overrule the judicial or legislative branches. Give them a single. six year term. Make it illegal for them to hold any further government position, then boot them out. The Presidency should be nothing more than a revolving door of nobody bureaucrats, like a Prime Minister.

Also, they shouldn't get Secret Service protection for life. They can have the same Second Amendment protections as other citizens after office, which are supposed to be perfectly sufficient. Or let them hire private security.

Should the Presidency be a special case?

It is a special case.

Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.

But until that happens the presidency is a very specific position that only one person holds. But at the end of the day, Congress as a whole holds more power, so term limits in Congress I would consider much more impactful (in a bad way) than term limits on the presidency.

>Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.

I'm not saying that, although I do find the idea appealing. Mostly I'm saying the position of President has been elevated in the ideals of American politics far out of proportion that what it should be, and the position itself has all of these weird Neo-monarchical backdoors to give the Presidency some degree of carte blanche power over the other branches, just because the founding fathers didn't trust the other branches to be capable of doing their jobs.

American Presidential elections have become national events to rival the Superbowl, but few Americans care nearly as much about judges, or Senators or Congress, much less local government. By default, most will write off the entirety of government as a fully corrupt, perfectly incompetent sewer, not worth engaging with, believing in or thinking about beyond spite. Only the President is seen to have true agency, can be justified as representing the people, and has the power to enable actual change, almost through sheer force of will alone. At least if they're from your party.

I just think the balance is entirely out of whack but I'm not certain whether that's a symptom of merely politics or a flaw in the system itself.

> Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders

Oh add both of those to the list of things I wish we could remove! Pardon are often used as little more than political capital, and executive orders reek of executive overreach and an abuse of power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com