Is GW a lame duck?

... and does it make any difference?

The US version of democracy has always seemed strange to me, you elect two chambers of government, Congress and Senate, you then elect a president who is able to appoint cronies who were elected by no-one, form them into an 'administration', and then do whatever the fuck he wants.

So now you have the two elected chambers unable to rule for at least the next two years. Shouldn't they have the power to override Bush now that the American people have said they don't like the things he's done?



"I don't want to say that George Bush is a lame duck, but this morning, Cheney shot him".
Bill Maher

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

... and does it make any difference?

The US version of democracy has always seemed strange to me, you elect two chambers of government, Congress and Senate, you then elect a president who is able to appoint cronies who were elected by no-one, form them into an 'administration', and then do whatever the fuck he wants.

So now you have the two elected chambers unable to rule for at least the next two years. Shouldn't they have the power to override Bush now that the American people have said they don't like the things he's done?



"I don't want to say that George Bush is a lame duck, but this morning, Cheney shot him".
Bill Maher

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:blink:

No wonder it seems strange to you, you don't understand it.

Bush isn't electing "cronies", nor is he able to do "whatever the fuck he wants". I'm also not at all sure why you say that our legislature isn't able to "rule" for the coming two years. :unsure:

You need to do some reading about the United States Legislative Branch. Study the Executive Branch if you'd like to learn about Bush's "cronies".

Wouldn't it have been a tad more informative if you'd pointed out my 'mistakes' instead of recommending reading material?

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

Wouldn't it have been a tad more informative if you'd pointed out my 'mistakes' instead of recommending reading material?

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Well, I did point out your mistakes - the major ones at least, but you need to do some reading if you really want to be educated on the subject. There is a great deal to learn, but the essentials can picked up in some basic reading.

Get to it then. ;)

OK, so tell me why congress can't order Bush to quit Iraq?

And which elections did rice, Rumsfeld etc get elected in?

I think the last word in the title has a letter wrong :shifty:

Yes there are unelected appointees in high level administration positions.

On the system.
The idea was to have co-equal branches of government to keep checks and balances and prevent a "king" situation. Yes it can lead to deadlock, but sometimes deadlock is the least damaging. Usually it leads to compromise, not always sensible or beneficial compromise. I see you like maher, he summed up how silly some can be

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New Rule: Politics is about compromises. Really stupid compromises.

That's how we got such laws as... Blacks are 3/5 of a person. Slaves are property, unless they make it to Ohio. Interning the Japanese, but not the Germans. Slaughtering the Indians, but letting the ones who survive run the Keno parlors. Porn, but not hardcore porn. Booze, and then no booze, and then booze again. But no pot. Except medical marijuana. Which is legal to possess, but illegal to obtain. And my favorite; you can't have stem cells, except the ones we already have.

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With one party holding all branches there has been little in the way of accountability. It will be interesting to see how things play the next two years....I expect to be reading and hearing "executive privilege" a fair bit.

Sometimes even when one party holds all the branches they assume a self imposed lameness and do little :dry:
The outgoing republican controlled 109th congress has only passed 2 out of 11 spending bills, it has decided to put off the remaining 9 until the new year, thus leaving almost a half-trillion dollars of spending bills for the incoming Democratic majority.

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Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) admitted that political considerations may be behind the inertia, stating, “I know a lot of folks just as soon not to see them done this year and let the Democrats struggle here next year.”

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They are leaving important spending bills behind so the can hinder the opposition party. It looks like they will work just 4 days when they get back next month.


The system was designed this way for important reasons at the time, and for the most part I would say the system works as well as any other system of elected government. It has it's good and bad points.

It's not the system that makes it work or stall. It's the people that are elected.

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

OK, so tell me why congress can't order Bush to quit Iraq?

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I don't claim to be an expert on this part, but, the president needs the approval of congress to go to war, but it's the president that makes the choice to act on the approval.(simplified) I look at it as congress giving him the tools he needs to go to war if he decides he has to.
Congress holds the purse strings, so they can stop funding the war, thus effectively forcing him to "quit"
The president can veto bills, but congress can override the veto if it has enough votes to do so.
To get over "veto proof" bills Bush has taken to using signing statements basically saying he reserves the right to ignore it. This is a questionable practice and I suspect one of the things that will be looked into when the democrats get the locksmith to open the "oversight rooms".

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

And which elections did rice, Rumsfeld etc get elected in?

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With most appointees that will hold positions of power, he has to get approval from the senate. If the senate says no he can "recess appoint" his choice in between senate sessions, but this is time limited.

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

OK, so tell me why congress can't order Bush to quit Iraq?

And which elections did rice, Rumsfeld etc get elected in?

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This is actually a good place to start, seriously it is very interesting and explains a lot in a short space of time.

Don't get chaps here to explain your mistakes tho', I'm not entirely convinced they understand it too well themselves.

EDIT. I just read on in the thread and see that vidcc was explaining things. Please note I posted the above prior to reading his post. If mine reads as if it was referring to his please believe me that was not the case. It was a general comment.

POTUS is the Commander-in-Chief.

For lack of a better way of putting it, that means he is the leader of the government; C-IN-C (CINC) is not a meaningless term.

He appoints a cabinet of people he deems qualified (Condi, Rummy, etc.) who are subject to the formality of a confirmation process by congress.

They can accept or reject his candidates, but cannot appoint their own.

POTUS can order acts of war by executive fiat absent congress' formal approval.

Such actions are undertaken in the field by standing personnel; any prolonged effort would presumably require additional funding/staffing, at which point congress can opt in or out, thus registering it's approval or disapproval of POTUS' actions.

A declaration of war by congress constitutes formal approval.

BTW-

A President halfway through his second term is by definition a lame duck, especially if his popularity is at a low ebb, but even more so if congress is oppositional by political party.

The condition arises (these days, anyway) primarily from the jockeying of prospective candidates for the next go-'round, and the political party's desire to plump them for the voting public.

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Originally Posted by vidcc

I don't claim to be an expert on this part, but, the president needs the approval of congress to go to war,

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I was going to question this, as I'm sure that isn't the case, but j2k4 has cleared it up.

In Australia, a few years ago, there was a referendum on the head of state. The country was split into three camps, those who wanted rid of the British monarchy at all costs, those who wanted an elected president, and those who wanted to retain the status quo.

The government allowed the referendum, but on their terms, what they didn't want was an elected president, because they felt he\she would have de-facto political power, and could undermine the authority of the government.

So they set the referendum up with two choices ... keep things the way they are, or have a president elected by the government and opposition, sack-able by the prime minister.

The people wouldn't have this, and voted for the status quo rather than a president they didn't want.

To those of us outside the US, some of us anyway, we view the US president and his powers with a certain amount of fear, especially after you put the nuclear button on the table in front of Ronnie Raygun. The world as a whole doesn't like GW, we think he's dangerous, and we feel he'd rather jeopardise the world than admit he was wrong.

The next two years will be interesting, the Reps impeached Clinton over a blow-job, do you think the Dems will impeach Bush, and if they did, would they leave it until his last year in office?

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Originally Posted by Ava Estelle

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Originally Posted by vidcc

I don't claim to be an expert on this part, but, the president needs the approval of congress to go to war,

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I was going to question this, as I'm sure that isn't the case, but j2k4 has cleared it up.

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I made the point of saying I am not an expert on this because it an ongoing debate
the whole article is an interesting read it gives a brief history of presidential "power grabs", but the best way to get someone to ignore a post is a huge c&p, so I'll just put the link.

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The decision to go to war is exclusively that of Congress

Sadly, it seems we've reached the point where the Constitution is no longer relevant on matters of a president's war-making powers. Presidents, the Congress and the courts have made going to war, once a serious constitutional issue, a purely political question.

As a result, in the last half century, the war powers clause of the Constitution has become a nullity, if not a quaint relic. While conservatives often insist on following the letter of the Constitution on most issues, on matters of war they ignore it.

That's a disgrace, because the Framers of the Constitution carefully laid out the decision-making process for war. Pursuant to the document, war is a decision to be made exclusively by the representatives of the people -- the Congress. Only Congress is authorized to declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, and make the rules for these armed forces. There is nothing vague or unclear about the language in Article I, ¤ 8, clauses 11-16.


Our history of Congress declaring war

On five occasions, Congress has, indeed, declared war, just as the Constitution contemplates: with England in 1812, Mexico in 1846, and in Spain in 1898, and in World War I and World War II. In each instance, Congress did so at the request of the President.

On at least two occasions, Congress has refused to declare war despite a president's seeking such a declaration. In 1815, Congress turned down President's Madison's request to go to war against Algiers -- authorizing instead limited naval action. In 1999, by a tie vote of 213 to 213, the House of Representatives refused to give President Clinton a declaration of war against Yugoslavia for action in Kosovo.

From 1789 until 1950, presidents repeatedly engaged the nation in military hostilities through unilateral exercise of their powers as commander-in-chief. Yet when doing so they always sought congressional authority, even if after the fact.

An often-cited example of the practice of unilateral Presidential warmaking is President Lincoln's commencement of the Civil War while Congress was in recess. Yet what is less frequently noted is that he sought ratification of his action when Congress returned.

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All this dispute over powers aside, the the president is in reality limited unilaterally (authorised by the War Powers Resolution.) to short military operations due to the fact that wars cannot be fought if congress refuses to fund them.

Another area where I am not an expert is where "war" isn't actually declared. I believe that we went into Iraq using only "an authorisation of the use of force"