House of Eratosthenes

Europe makes a lot of mistakes with their government and their economies…but a lot of those countries, you have to give them this much, they can vote no-confidence and call for elections. Not sure how this works out for them, but the concept seems to have a lot to do with what we’re lacking here in the states: A fuse to be tripped. They’ve got this way of saying “We’re not getting a good hit rate with the decisions being made lately, and they seem to be consistently, systematically, bad/corrupt/stupid/wrong decisions. Let’s fix this.”

In the States, we make these two-to-four year commitments to stick with the elected leadership through thick or thin. Such a commitment, bringing nothing to the governed save for the obligation and nothing to the governors save for the benefits, is supposed to be a testament to how well our system works, being a key component to this “bloodless revolution” concept. I like bloodless revolutions; but this part of it needs a re-think. America has no constitutional answer for the situation in which their leaders have “jumped the shark,” as it were. Thrown a rod, slipped a cog — it’s like machinery. Sometimes the gears aren’t meshing, and you can’t just hope things will slip back in place after you’ve had a good night’s sleep and cranked the starter one more time. An overhaul is needed.

This is something I’ve written about many times before: The official, committee or system that turns out good, wise decisions, less often than a system of decision-making that would rely on random chance. This is an extraordinary and profound insult I’m laying down, and unfortunately, I mean it to be. A stupid person would not qualify for such an insult because he would generate decisions that are good decisions, roughly half the time; the people I’m singling out for attack, make the right decisions a great deal less often than this theoretical stupid person.

How did McCarthy put it? “if [Sec. of State George C.] Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country’s interest.” Say what you want about Sen. McCarthy’s actions, but these are wise, prophetic words. It’s become a national nightmare: The so-called “leader” who morphs into a nearly perfect reverse-compass. It begins to look like a better and better idea, every day, to simply find out what this guy wants to do and do the opposite.

One thing we should think about, though, is that a lot of European states have become socialistic, and it’s easy to see a lot of their socialistic programs start off with these leaders trying to prove what wonderful people they are. This is why Europe is going broke. The pension programs have to keep inflating every year so the leaders can prove their charitable nature. And more and more laws have to be passed to make sure nobody is ever in danger of anything bad happening. Perhaps this all starts with the leaders trying to head off these no-confidence votes. The connection is there. So maybe they have a device in place to prevent this sad situation of a steady, non-stop progression of bad dumb decisions — and the device is not quite working for them.

But our device is not working for us, either. Our Founding Fathers, perhaps anticipating Europe’s problem, did not provide for this no-confidence fuse-tripping…except at regular intervals…and what’ve we got. I see President Obama on the television, speaking, with the sound turned off, and I have the same reaction every time: Oh shit, what’s He doing this time. Find a slobbering Obama fan somewhere…get them drunk…eventually, they’ll admit they’ve got the same reaction. Have a few more drinks together, the alcohol will do its work and the two of you might have the idea you’ve done a better job solving the problem at your drinking table, than our elected leaders. But the tragedy here is, once you’re sober again you’ll still think that’s the case, and you’ll probably be right about this.

This is not good. We should do something to change it, or at least, try to.

Well, the US does have the impeachment and removal process, which applies not only to the President. (The Constitution says that “when the President is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside,” implying that someone else presides in other possible cases.) Further, by two-thirds vote, either house of Congress can expel a member.

Since all impeachments are conducted by the House of Representatives, the popularly-elected body of Congress (at least before 1913), it’s clear that they were intended to fucntion as the lever of popular pressure on a rapacious demagogue – but also clear that, like the Electoral College or representative democracy as a whole, it was meant to also insulate the merely unpopular or mediocre from partisan reprisal.

Our problem today isn’t so much that we don’t have a legal function, because we do – just that the legal function has been successfully rebranded AS partisan. Clinton rode out his impeachment on the basic defense of “You’re just trying to get back at him for gettin’ a little somethin’ somethin’.” So you’re right that something should change, but that thing is attitude, and no matter what law or amendment passed to “fix” the current problem, the attitude in play would eventually worm its way in and ruin that as well. Ultimately no law is sufficient when it’s ignored, as we see with the rest of the Constitution. A sober and sensible country would have impeached several of the sitting Senate by now, for example, for more than ample cause. Their own party would have likely voted to convict based on a strict factual account of their misdeeds. Then again, a sober and sensible country probably would have elected far fewer of these meddlesome wannabe princelings in the first place. So that’s the paradox of good governance: the more it’s needed, the harder it is to achieve.
- nightfly | 05/24/2012 @ 07:30
Well, you know, who’s to say the impeachment process has been under-used. There are many who would insist the opposite is true. Myself, I’d certainly sign on to the idea that the threat of it has been overused, at least since Clinton…but the point is, it’s in the eye of the beholder. You’re right, this thoughtless notion has set in that there’s no reason for this fuse to be tripped save for partisan bickering, but it’s become a piece of partisan bickering itself, a cudgel to be hauled out at convenient times.

The “problem,” like so many, seems to boil down to just this: We have a “Dark Knight” Constitution that, by design, only gives us the government we deserve, not necessarily the government that would be good for us.
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2012 @ 08:31
Yeah, not willing to go all “the Constitution is a living, breathing document”. It has served us well as is. It’s like our laws, just enforce what’s already on the books before we going making more.

And let’s not use Europe for examples of governess, other than what NOT to do. Full stop.

As nightfly pointed out very well, there are safeguards in place already. Use ‘em.

BTW, Senators serve for six years (“In the States, we make these two-to-four year commitments”), I know you know that…just saying…
- tim | 05/24/2012 @ 08:54
Oh boy, we’re not going to go down that bunny hole are we. Every two years, you get a new Senate…just not an all-the-way-new one. You get a new Senate every two years…
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2012 @ 09:01
“They” don’t get to vote ” No-Confidence”, the government in power does. As if the “Real Republicans” who stabbed W in the back could had also ended his presidency and formed a government with Kerry. Yes, lets give more power to the most self destructive of the selfish bunch. And having empowered the brown shirt boys, you wonder that Europe is so much more Socialist then ours. Our system is working fine. The actual problem is the desires of the voters, who do get a say, even under our system. But thank’s to the system the founders gave us, our only actual big problem is over-commitment to the gladhanders, which the Supreme court has already said is not binding. Trivial.
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 05/24/2012 @ 09:01
Well my point is, I have strong doubts that Obama could survive a no-confidence vote if we had one. And I don’t mean to single Him out, I think a lot of the powers who are independent of Him would be unable to survive one…I think they’ve jumped the shark…the roulette wheel will come up with the right decision far more often than Obama would, more often than Elena Kagan or Ruth Bader Ginsburg would, more often than Nancy Pelosi would…

When a game of random chance beats you by several points, that’s a bad thing. How’d you like to fly in a plane piloted by some jackass who’s beaten by a coin-flip, by forty points or more.

I should probably have gone into detail about the Gray Davis story. Time came for him to get re-elected and he did exactly what the President is doing right now…no record to run on so, uh, I’ll protect womens right to choose, blah blah blah…unions offered free cigarettes to the homeless people to get out and vote Gray. He got his two or three points over fifty percent, got his second term, in California, yay, then the recall effort started. The unions got out again and started the mindless droning chant…you’re trying to recall a popularly elected governor, trying to overturn the result of the election. The people of California already picked him, they’ll just pick him again, this is a huge waste of time. Seems almost like a sensible argument. But it didn’t work that way.

And since it didn’t — and, you know, it should’ve — it raises a question I think might be worth pondering: Is an election really determining what we think it is determining? You know, if you launched a recall election against President Reagan right after he won re-election, it wouldn’t have worked, right? Trouble with these elections is, if you get 50.1 percent of the vote it might as well be unanimous…maybe that’s not valid. And you know, if the public can be swayed and bribed and bullied and ballot-stuffed into picking someone they don’t really want, that’s pretty much a good definition for “corruption” right there.
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2012 @ 09:13
“if [Sec. of State George C.] Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country’s interest.”

Which from where I am sitting very strongly implies that the socialists in power are doing their best to do their worst. At the very least, they are deliberately sandbagging the economy.

These people are not completely stupid, or completely incompetent. They are accomplishing what they set out to do, hobble the giant that is (was?) the USA. It’s enemy action from within.
- pdwalker | 05/24/2012 @ 09:49
Most of our problems stem from the Constitution itself.

If we’re going to change anything, let’s get rid of the Constitution and return to the Articles of Confederation. That would eliminate the Executive and the Presidency, the Senate and the entire federal Judiciary. Each State would have one vote in the House. The President of the House would collect the few federal taxes allowed (import duties) and supervise the small navy (for coastal defense) and the tiny army needed to keep the Indians at bay.
- Bob Sykes | 05/24/2012 @ 10:19
Not sure how this works out for them, but the concept seems to have a lot to do with what we’re lacking here in the states…

From The Wiki (“Politics of Italy”):

There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 61 governments in this time.[8]

Yeah, that really works , doesn’t it? I’d paraphrase Churchill (I think) on this subject, to the effect of our system is the worst, except for all others.
- bpenni | 05/24/2012 @ 12:52
Yeah. You know, 61 sounds pretty bad…but, to repeat, when a Magic 8 ball beats the people in charge, given the high levels of power that they hold, and that they’re constantly seeking more — that is also bad.

I see nothing in the post in need of revision. If it’s read in the spirit in which I wrote it, the discerning reader will pick up it is positively brimming over with avoidance-avoidance conflict…and yes, there’s a wiki article on that as well.
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2012 @ 17:59
During the Bush years, the Left was constantly calling for Bush’s impeachment, mostly related to the allegations that he’d “lied” to the US about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Apart from debunking the claim that he’d based the case for war entirely on that or that there weren’t any to be found over there….I also grew fond of telling these people:

WE DO NOT HAVE A PARLIMENTARY SYSTEM IN THE US. THE LEGISLATIVE BODY DOESN’T GET TO CALL A ‘VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE’ IN THE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP ANY OLD TIME IT PLEASES.

It was like the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” meant nothing at all to these people. I suspect a lot of them were still angry with the Right for backing the GOP attempt to impeach Clinton back in 98. We were told, “When Clinton lied, nobody died.” (No, but plenty of people died during his foreign policy follies…)

While I do wonder why so many of the world’s republics seem to have a government more like Italy’s and less like ours (including the ones that the US occupied and rebuilt following World War II)…I wouldn’t be in favor of replacing our president with a prime minister or our Congress with a Parliament.

I prefer the current system – we elect a president and we keep him for four to eight years unless he commits some serious crime while in office that warrants impeachment by the US House, something only three presidents in all of US history are alleged to have done (and none of those were actually removed by the Senate, Nixon having stepped down prior to the Senate vote). Our system allows our president to focus on governing, instead of worrying that Congress can get rid of him the moment that it falls under control of the opposition party.
- cylarz | 05/25/2012 @ 03:43
There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 61 governments in this time.

This statement is meaningless. It’s not like the government buildings in Rome have been bulldozed and rebuilt 61 times in that time, or that ordinary Italians were worried they wouldn’t have water and power, or police, fire, and military protection in-between those governments.

Italy, like many other republics, also has a lot more than two major parties. Some countries have something like eight. (Russia has four or five of varying sizes, I think, including some throwbacks to the Soviet communist era.) In fact, I think the UK and the US, with two major ones each, are more the exception than the rule.

In most democratically-governed countries, none of the parties command enough popular support at any one time to govern outright, so the two or three who are in the majority must form a governing coalition. Every time this happens, they’re said to have “formed a new government.” It’s simply a political term. I doubt much even really changes over there, and as in the rest of Europe, only the small outlier parties seem to have a platform of making an actual dent in their debt, curtailing immigration, or doing much of anything else that US Republicans would understand.

How far did that Le Pen fellow get in France? Case closed.
- cylarz | 05/25/2012 @ 03:54
One of the main problems is that the US system isn’t designed for the “imperial presidency.” (I forget what leftist d-bag coined that term, but he was largely right). The president was always envisioned as more of a placeholder — stronger than the rotating quasi-“executive” (something like the Speaker of the House, I think) of the Articles of Confederation, but nothing like what he has become today.

Of course, in those days, news traveled by horse over muddy-to-nonexistent roads, so maybe four years was considered the bare minimum for people to figure out if they had no confidence in the administration. 🙂

Either way, the system still works pretty well at what it was designed to do — gum up the works. Most of the signature liberal “victories” that are rocketing us past the farthest reaches of insolvency were passed either under extraordinary combinations of circumstances (Social Security, ObamaCare), or the result of decades of frankly communistic, “revolutionary,” Cloward-Piven style lawfare. If you’re going to call for a new constitutional convention, the first thing you should scrap is the entire judicial system, in my opinion.

Throw that sucker out, baby, bathwater, and all. Then insert two Constitutional provisions stating that 1) public sector employees shall never be allowed to unionize, and 2) there shall never be a Department of Education, and any suggestion to establish one shall be considered treason (and punished by firing squad). Problem solved.
- Severian | 05/25/2012 @ 07:02
Peeking up from the bunny hole…

Voting for someone who serves six years seems like a “commitment” to me.

I guess having to be represented by the likes of UpChuck Schumer and sHillary Clinton will make one “appreciate” just how long they serve per election.
- tim | 05/25/2012 @ 08:27
[…] Recent Tripping the Fuse “I Don’t Want to See Obama on ‘The View’” Bill Whittle Goes After Chris Hayes “You Wish to Know What I Am?” How Much Does it Cost to Create a Job? Awkward Alexandra Gekas is Infuriated… Is Obama Really a President? “Theological Responsibility” “Did They Die in Vain?” “Oh, the Rhetorical Proximity!” I Read a Very Bad Sentence Lately You Have to Pay For That Can’t Retire How to Make Obama’s Spending Look Small “Will MSM Report on Obama Membership in Socialist New Party?” Is Facebook Contributing to the Divorce Rate? Value Them Because They’re Not Beautiful “Incredible Devotion to our Constitution” Memo For File CLVIII […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/31/2012 @ 23:39

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Memo For File CLVIIIThursday, May 24th, 2012

Memo For File CLVIII
Thursday, May 24th, 2012