In response to my suggestion that the president has no incentive to voluntarily abdicate power, and that Congress has to assert itself, DAS writes:
Indeed. Don't people take high school civics anymore? I do seem to remember something in the Federalist papers about "ambition being made to check ambition". The whole point of our system is that we avoid tyranny by making it in the President's political interest to assert power over Congress and in the political interest of Congresscritters to make a stink and check and balance the President (e.g. Harry Truman gaining political power by investigating matters related to the executive branch).
The real problem in our system (and the triumph of the GOP's denigration of "politics" and government) is that it's no longer in a politician's interest to make waves. Where before people would say "that Harry Truman -- sure he's only doing it for political reasons -- but let's reward him politically for doing such a good thing", now they'll say "oh that Henry Waxman -- he's only doing it for political reasons" and dismiss it thus.
And Josh G. writes:
The fundamental problem is that, when they wrote the Constitution, the Founders failed to foresee the emergence of political parties (which they disapproved of). Checks and balances between branches don't work if the leaders of the different branches are all from the same party. The Framers placed a big bet on the nonexistence of the party system, and they lost. This became clear as soon as 1800, when the Constitution had to be amended to change the Presidential election process after the Burr/Jefferson fiasco. That, unfortunately, also eviscerated the impeachment process because it meant that another member of the President's party would take power. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Do you think the Democrats might have worked harder to push for impeachment if it meant that Kerry would become President rather than Cheney?
