Law professor suggests two-person presidency to quell voter anger

[cyberswede]

Law professor suggests two-person presidency to quell voter anger

The rancorous Tea Party movement now shaking up politics is just the latest form of Americans’ recent frustration with their government. For years, voters have come to believe nobody in Washington is listening to them and their concerns are no longer their government’s concerns.

University of Iowa law professor David Orentlicher said those frustrations are justified and he offers a unique way to address them—adopt a two-person, multi-party presidency.

“Substantial numbers of voters feel that that their interests and concerns are not represented in a politically dominant White House,” said Orentlicher, who also teaches at the Indiana University-Indianapolis law school. “With a two-person presidency, a much higher percentage of voters will have their preferred candidate serving and will be much more comfortable with the initiatives that emerge from the executive branch.”

Orentlicher said the idea of a single executive was intended by the framers of the Constitution to be a check against Congress, which they believed would be the dominant branch of government. Time, however, has proven the framers’ concerns were misplaced.


Read the rest: http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2010/september/092410twopresidents.html

[Drunken Irishman]

1. Oh yeah, this will end well.

[last_texas_dem]

22. Hey, what's going on in that picture?!

Is that John Kerry?

[GSLevel9]

25. it DOES look like JK. nt

[cherokeeprogressive]

39. It won't end at all. It doesn't have to. It's a non-starter. n/t

[FSogol]

2. Gridocracy: Government by Gridlock

:shrug:

Or how about a Dumbocracy which would be a government ruled by University of Iowa law professor David Orentlicher?

[Historic NY]

3. We did that in the movie we had co-Presidents.Krammer & Douglass

[hatrack]

4. Hell, why not three? Pompey, Crassus and Caesar, working together, could show this country . . .

Oh, wait.

Never mind!

[supernova]

8. Beat me to it! GMTA

:D

I was just thinking "Well that Roman Triumvirate worked so well!"

[myrna minx]

10. An old fashioned Roman triumvirate is the the best solution.

:D What could possibly go wrong?

[zipplewrath]

5. Same reason as the AG

The framers considered having a separate office of Attorney General. But they realized the opportunity for mischief and changed their minds. It probably could have ended up much like the "Independent prosecutor" position. The did start out with separate VP and Presidents, basically with the "loser" as VP. It didn't take them long to correct that either.

The "real" solution is for congress to re-assert their power and govern as intended. I don't know if that can ever be done, but if in nothing other than the war powers, it might be a darn fine idea.

[marginlized]

12. Agreed, Congress needs to grow some. n/t

[depakid]

34. Congress' biggest problem is that it currently operates under an unconstitutional framework

The reasoning is laid out rather impeccably here:

ABOUT the Senate, a college professor of mine used to say, “One day, the Supreme Court will declare it unconstitutional.” He was joking, I think.

But the Senate, as it now operates, really has become unconstitutional: as we saw during the recent health care debacle, a 60-vote majority is required to overcome a filibuster and pass any contested bill. The founders, though, were dead set against supermajorities as a general rule, and the ever-present filibuster threat has made the Senate a more extreme check on the popular will than they ever intended.

...This change to the Constitution was not the result of, say, a formal amendment, but a procedural rule adopted in 1975: a revision of Senate Rule 22, which was the old cloture rule. Before 1975, it took two-thirds of the Senate to end a filibuster, but it was the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” filibuster: if senators wanted to stop a vote, they had to bring in the cots and the coffee and read from Grandma’s recipe for chicken soup until, unshaven, they keeled over from their own rhetorical exhaust.

For the record, nothing like Senate Rule 22 appears in the Constitution, nor was there unlimited debate until Vice President Aaron Burr presided over the Senate in the early 180os. In 1917, after a century of chaos, the Senate put in the old Rule 22 to stop unlimited filibusters. Because it was about stopping real, often distressing, floor debate, one might have been able to defend that rule under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, which says, “Each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.”

As revised in 1975, Senate Rule 22 seemed to be an improvement: it required 60 senators, not 67, to stop floor debate. But there also came a significant change in de facto Senate practice: to maintain a filibuster, senators no longer had to keep talking. Nowadays, they don’t even have to start; they just say they will, and that’s enough. Senators need not be on the floor at all. They can be at home watching Jimmy Stewart on cable. Senate Rule 22 now exists to cut off what are ghost filibusters, disembodied debates.

As a result, the supermajority vote no longer deserves any protection under Article I, Section 5 — if it ever did at all. It is instead a revision of Article I itself: not used to cut off debate, but to decide in effect whether to enact a law. The filibuster votes, which once occurred perhaps seven or eight times a whole Congressional session, now happen more than 100 times a term. But this routine use of supermajority voting is, at worst, unconstitutional and, at best, at odds with the founders’ intent.

Here’s why. First, the Constitution explicitly requires supermajorities only in a few special cases: ratifying treaties and constitutional amendments, overriding presidential vetoes, expelling members and for impeachments. With so many lawyers among them, the founders knew and operated under the maxim “expressio unius est exclusio alterius” — the express mention of one thing excludes all others. But one need not leave it at a maxim. In the Federalist Papers, every time Alexander Hamilton or John Jay defends a particular supermajority rule, he does so at length and with an obvious sense of guilt over his departure from majority rule.

Second, Article I, Section 3, expressly says that the vice president as the presiding officer of the Senate should cast the deciding vote when senators are “equally divided.” The procedural filibuster does an end run around this constitutional requirement, which presumed that on the truly contested bills there would be ties. With supermajority voting, the Senate is never “equally divided” on the big, contested issues of our day, so that it is a rogue senator, and not the vice president, who casts the deciding vote.

The procedural filibuster effectively disenfranchises the vice president, eliminating as it does one of the office’s only two constitutional functions. Yet the founders very consciously intended for the vice president, as part of the checks and balances system, to play this tie-breaking role — that is why Federalist No. 68 so specifically argued against a sitting member of the Senate being the presiding officer in place of the vice president.

Third, Article I pointedly mandates at least one rule of proceeding, namely, that a majority of senators (and House members, for that matter) will constitute a quorum. Article I, Section 5 states in part that “a majority of each shall constitute a majority to do business.” Of course, in requiring a simple majority for a quorum, the founders were concerned about no-shows for a host of reasons — not least of all because the first legislators had to travel great distances by stagecoach.

But the bigger reason for the rule was to keep a minority from walking out and thereby blocking a majority vote. In Federalist No. 75, Hamilton dismissed a supermajority rule for a quorum thus: “All provisions which require more than a majority of any body to its resolutions have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority.”

It would be illogical for the Constitution to preclude a supermajority rule with respect to a quorum while allowing it on an ad hoc and more convenient basis any time a minority wanted to block a vote. Yet that is essentially what Senate Rule 22 achieves on any bill that used to require a majority vote.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11geoghegan.html?pagewanted=all

[AtomicKitten]

6. Sounds like a solution to assuage the poor losers in elections.

:thumbsdown:

K&R

[jaysunb]

32. Too True !

Or just wait for a white guy. :evilfrown:

[yurbud]

7. this sounds like affirmative action for republicans

[JuniperLea]

9. LOL!

There you go!

[myrna minx]

11. LOL.

No kidding. :rofl:

[LiberalFighter]

13. A two person presidency would be suicide.

As far a I am concerned the branches of government for the most part perform the functions as intended.

Have a much higher percentage of voters with their preferred candidate serving? Maybe if he understood the intricacies of the federal government which in some cases is similar to the Indiana House where he served. Except that those damn fools in Indiana only require a simple majority to override the Governor's veto.

David needs to understand that there are many positions that must be filled by someone by/from the opposing party within the administration.

There is nothing justified in the voters frustrations. Until, they are educated about the process and the consequences they should not complain. Most voters have no idea about anything beyond just electing candidates and what the media provides to the public for consumption.

[thereismore]

14. This guy would not be a Constitutional scholar, would he. nt

[EC]

15. I'm real tired of people saying that the frustrations of the tea

people is justified...it isn't...they're frustration is with the fact that more people voted for a different way then they wanted...period...

[xxqqqzme]

36. There's that and the fact that he's

not a white guy.

We had a co-president from 2001-2009. That certainly didn't help and they were the same party!

[Fire1]

16. Anything to appease the right. Fuck those people!!!!! n/t

[Raine1967]

17. This is a LAW PROFESSOR??? What law? Patent law?

'cause it certainly can't be constitutional law.

[woo me with science]

27. LOL!!!!! [phone] nt

[damntexdem]

18. Well, then, why not a triumvirate?

Then we could have really cool civil wars, like Rome did in Caesar's time.

;-)

[Raine1967]

19. It's participation award politics!

[CakeGrrl]

20. This guy doesn't get out much, does he?

And what if the two co-presidents disagree? Who wins?

Meh - not even worth discussing.

[last_texas_dem]

21. In a way, the way the Founders had it originally set up provided for this (sort of)

Not considering the possibility of political parties soon developing, they originally had it where the runner-up would become Vice President- and ended up acting quickly to change this after Adams and Jefferson ended up serving together. Can you imagine Obama w/ a VP McCain? Then again, McCain might have chosen to develop an entirely different persona in that position (as opposed to the "I'm a wingnut & I've always been a wingnut" persona he's developed in the hopes of holding on to his Senate seat). The lust for power does strange things to people.

[backscatter712]

23. The Founding Fathers fucked up when they said political parties were bad.

The first thing human beings do when they end up in a political situation is find like-minded people, ally with them to form power blocs, so they can act in ways they cannot do alone.

That means political parties are inevitable, and always will be.

The founding fathers should have set up a multi-party, proportional-representation, parliamentary legislature. This country would be running a hell of a lot more smoothly if they did.

[Teaser]

24. Law professor wanks in public, gets paid for it

.

[treestar]

26. The Tea Party is a small minority

This moran talks as if they are a solid majority.

And his idea is dumber than dumb.

[JustAmused]

28. Too Funny

About 30 years ago....during the infamous Reagan election...my ex and I went to a Halloween party. I had on my musician....tails with white tie and she hod on her "hooker" outfit...lol. I had monoply money hanging out of my pockets. I had a huge badge on that said "We are the Presidents of the United State". LOL. We gave away monoply money all night to get people to vote for us for best costume...lol.

By the way, the idea was not entirely original. When I was in school at U. of Alaska, Fairbanks, an English professor and friend did a whole piece on that idea. Can not remember his name now though.

[Drunken Irishman]

29. So, did you win?

[JustAmused]

31. No

We ran out of money. I guess we needed a better lobbyist...lol

[stevedeshazer]

30. Worst idea ever.

Someone who graduated from the eighth grade could see the problem with this.

My personal example is that three of us were put in charge of a department.

We ended up fighting with each other and nothing got done.

This guy is a law professor? Really? Iowans generally seem like sane people to me. Except this guy and that nut job congressman Steve King.

[FrenchieCat]

33. After 200+ years, now that the Black guy is President,

he should share.

How special! :eyes:

[alcibiades_mystery]

40. When I was in graduate school, a friend of mine insisted on

the students calling him Mr. Robinson. "Really?" I said. "I just have them call me by my first name."

Yeah, says my friend. As soon as black men gain the right to be called Mr., suddenly everybody goes by first names.

It was one of those scales-falling-from-the-eyes moments for me. You nailed it to the wall here, Frenchie.

[Umbral]

35. If we're going to rewrite the Constitution, lets just do away with the Senate instead. nt

[JVS]

37. That would just cause gridlock in another branch of government.

[vaberella]

38. Only during the Obama Presidency do we see this. For fuck's sake. n/t

[ProgressOnTheMove]

41. You virtually have that now with McGrumpy having a tantrum every 5 minutes....

It's a very Republican idea that wouldn't even get mentioned if the GOP were in office.

[peekaloo]

42. I want a two-headed President!

:eyes:

[COLGATE4]

43. Those who are good at the Law, practice it. Those who aren't

teach it. Professor Orentlicher should stick to his Torts and Civil Procedure.