Multi Party Politics in an American Presidential Republic: Part Five

The United States' administration is defined by the president at the head, but who else is there? Of course the millions of people in the executive branch. They are meant to be apart from the direct meddling of congress, and instead the congress must prescribe rules that will last as law beyond the will of any individual congressperson or senator, and has no ability to change the decision of any specific action. Same with the funding. 

The executive however cannot amend the law at all, and has no ability to withdraw from the treasury without authority of law. There is no way for a president to bypass congress this way. 

That makes the two powers sharply divided, and this has it's uses. It can force legislators to put their cards on the table and specify with words and not hidden intents, or create rules that are not tailored to actually cause what you intend to happen. It means that the executive, normally the most dangerous branch in any government, cannot rewrite the laws for it's own survival.

But the American constitution can often be rather light on details and doesn't address key questions, such as to what extent can congress delegate powers, if independent commissions aside from the president can really exist in practice, and doesn't create conflict resolution measures very much that forces sides to participate and gives them a reason to want to participate rather than standing off even if the people would benefit from mutual participations, and as so few laws of congress have really passed lately, any desire for reform is often directed towards the president to change any status quo, perhaps for good reasons, perhaps for bad ones, but reasons nonetheless. 

It also entrenches any status quo. America has never been a place of equality, even in the laws, and the laws always have benefited some group, and almost always is benefitting most a class that has strong influence over the identity of those who enact the laws. There are minorities that can be protected by laws that many may say they want to protect such as those who hold dissenting religious beliefs or those who are of a different ethnicity, but they also can protect economic or social groups who hold the status quo on power. 

All societies have these biases towards the status quo of course. That's been a hallmark of what agricultural and then industrial societies have always really been. Evolution has no end point it seeks to get it's organisms from the present to that point, it only works to keep organisms adapted to the environment and niche it's in present form (a major element in science that people not literate in their biology fail to understand, as a major fraction of Americans it seems from statistical surveys really shows they are not literate in). And in America, where the different groups stand off and normally can at least maintain what they have by refusing to cooperate, the things necessary to get a law passed, even if it is to repeal an existing law or to amend it, are vast. You don't need all these different groups to agree to maintain the status quo. 

In a multi party system, that could change. The congress for one would become one where you stand a good chance of being dethroned at the next election, for representatives in just two years, for senators, your party's strength potentially removed in two years and your own seat in six, both potentially being defeated in a much more competitive primary and not being elected in the general election. 

In a multi party congress, you likely would have several avenues of getting the partisan support to change the law. You don't necessarily need any one party to support you, whereas now it's certain that at least one party must have members supporting it to pass. These veto gates, the votes in the committees, getting a sponsor from a member in the first place, the support from the leadership having a number of leaders who might take it up or you may get a number of backbenchers who could vote to demand a discharge petition on the bill, the actual vote in the plenary, the same thing in the other house, the votes necessary to potentially end a filibuster (whether or not the rule is amended to kill debate with a simple majority as it is in the House or 60 senators), and either having a president supportive of the law or having the votes potentially necessary to override a veto. All of them become less limited by any one party or their leadership or both. Fail to act on your principles and others will take your place, new parties emerge in multi party systems a lot more easily, and fail to act or to create a good reason why you shouldn't act and your allies can abandon you while facing face more easily. 

In a strong and free society, most of the policy desires of the country should come from a legislature. They are the body that is most representative of the people, or at least more so than a single president and administration, the one that is harder to accuse of dictatorship or self centric policies, and the one within which individual people are often a lot more expendable. You don't need to keep around a single person to get the policies you want in most legislatures, but you often have very little choice in the executive where you do things like either support Donald Trump or you support Joseph Biden, and you can't give them up without changing most of what you believe about yourself no matter if you have been convinced by good arguments or see your policies failing or having not worked out when you last had real influence, or if you get seriously accused by a scandal. 

When the law is based on the legislative actions that are constantly renewing this way, constantly either agreeing to keep the status quo by genuine agreement that it is for the best and has proven itself to be so or else moving on, as a Socratic interlocutor is required to do if they are convinced by arguments they can't find sufficient counterarguments to, the executive becomes less polarized. You don't need to keep such an executive around if they prove themselves obnoxious or incapable. Your administration doesn't need to create policy on it's own. Popular demand doesn't expect or want a president to undermine the congress, or go around it. A president would be expected to create things like tax reform, create a universal Medicaid program, change gun rules, if the congress didn't hold real debates on this, and held actual plenary votes on the issue and legislators were scrutinized on all these issues and how they voted or helped to advance or stall a vote on these issues, rather than whether they have one of two letters R or D next to their ballot slot. Even if you are opposed to a proposal, at least you can show that the proposal was fairly defeated by those who were willing to stand by their refusal. 

You also don't have sudden shifts in the law. If you can suddenly repeal or risk repealing everything you hold dear, you fight like an animal with nothing to lose to keep onto your legislator or whoever else is crucial for keeping your policies and will alive. You keep onto a majority leader just for being a lightning rod useful for everyone else, knowing that basically nobody else could do it well. 

There is genuine use and in fact, need of limits on a legislature, who need disclosures and rules on themselves or else they become a corrupted oligarchy, and these often very boring parliamentary procedures are important and keep people protected, and this applies as useful checks to help keep constitutional rights before they need years potentially to go to a court for an injunction or finding of unconstitutionality. But stagnate too much, and those senators who once supported your chief magistrate may well get Cassius's dagger in him. I guess for the next election for your president you Yankee boys: "Alea iacta est.", let the die be cast.