Fifty House Democrats led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have sponsored a bill that would form a commission to assess President Donald Trump's mental fitness for office, pursuant to the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Congress has the power to create a commission to exercise the power to remove a mentally unfit president from office. The biggest worry is that this would inevitably be politicized. I say, let it happen! Let it be political. Let’s have an openly political “mental health commission” that will rule that being a member of the opposite political party is a mental illness. Hell, let it become a formality. It will simply be expected that the president will be removed from office after a change in Congressional control. Whenever a change in control of Congress happens, the new Congressional leadership will stuff it with political ideologues. And they’ll inevitably rule a president of the opposing party to be mentally unfit. Eventually it just becomes a formality, no one even considers it unusual. We just expect the presidency to be able to flip every two years. And we giggle that it has to be done by formally declaring the previous guy to be crazy. I think this would be a good idea.
Why? Because this would effectively transform the US into a Parliamentary democracy. A simple majority in both houses of Congress would be enough to install a new president. They effectively become a Prime Minister at that point. Parliamentary democracies have proven much more resilient to strong-man dictatorial takeover. It’s not as perfect a solution as amending the constitution to formally remove the office of president entirely, but it would be a decent hack to do something similar. And going to a Parliamentary system isn’t a magic cure-all, but it does have quite a bit of merit. As a plus, we would have the bonus of being “that nation that regularly declares its former leaders legally crazy.” And you know what? I think that works well with America’s energy.
I thought the benefits of parliamentary systems come from the fact that that they’re more proportional. They have a balance of power going on in the fact that you can win a seat from being popular in your district, but you can also win from being popular in your party, which gives a chance to minority parties that are spread thin across the country.
Winning a district directly gives you those “maverick” politicians that don’t fit into the major parties but they reflect the unique local politics. But those people can be corruptly beholden to their local industries. Winning off the party list results in members who represent their parties.
Congress has the power to create a commission to exercise the power to remove a mentally unfit president from office. The biggest worry is that this would inevitably be politicized. I say, let it happen! Let it be political. Let’s have an openly political “mental health commission” that will rule that being a member of the opposite political party is a mental illness. Hell, let it become a formality. It will simply be expected that the president will be removed from office after a change in Congressional control. Whenever a change in control of Congress happens, the new Congressional leadership will stuff it with political ideologues. And they’ll inevitably rule a president of the opposing party to be mentally unfit. Eventually it just becomes a formality, no one even considers it unusual. We just expect the presidency to be able to flip every two years. And we giggle that it has to be done by formally declaring the previous guy to be crazy. I think this would be a good idea.
Why? Because this would effectively transform the US into a Parliamentary democracy. A simple majority in both houses of Congress would be enough to install a new president. They effectively become a Prime Minister at that point. Parliamentary democracies have proven much more resilient to strong-man dictatorial takeover. It’s not as perfect a solution as amending the constitution to formally remove the office of president entirely, but it would be a decent hack to do something similar. And going to a Parliamentary system isn’t a magic cure-all, but it does have quite a bit of merit. As a plus, we would have the bonus of being “that nation that regularly declares its former leaders legally crazy.” And you know what? I think that works well with America’s energy.
I thought the benefits of parliamentary systems come from the fact that that they’re more proportional. They have a balance of power going on in the fact that you can win a seat from being popular in your district, but you can also win from being popular in your party, which gives a chance to minority parties that are spread thin across the country.
Winning a district directly gives you those “maverick” politicians that don’t fit into the major parties but they reflect the unique local politics. But those people can be corruptly beholden to their local industries. Winning off the party list results in members who represent their parties.
Deliciously written and insightful. Thank you!
Not bad in theory but fix gerrymandering and apportionment first