Our leaders at their best

Unfortunately, very quickly after President Washington, the electoral college ceased to be a deliberative body as it was intended to be, and became a rubber stamp for those electing the electors, to the point today that we usually don’t even know who the electors are, and only who they are “pledged” to. They weren’t even supposed to be behoilden to a specific presidential candidate before the election in the way it was supposed to work!! You were supposed to choose people to be electors who had good judgement and who could make the decision to pick the president from those nominated by the electoral college when they met. Don’t even get me started on how much of a corruption even HAVING primaries is… Anyway, while the way electors are proportioned between the states is slightly different than how it is done in the house, it is very close, essentially making the constituancy of both the president and the house to be almost the same. Thus weakening the differences of interest inherant in the design, and weakening the checks and balances.

Anyway, it was further corrupted by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which instituted the popular election of senators, thus depriving completely the states of a voice in the federal government, and once again aligning the constituancies and interests of the senate with the house and the president. Once again weakening the checks and balances.

And so we end up with a system that originally carefully seperated the interests of the three bodies, to ensure stong checks and balances and differences between the bodies, with one where the interests are now closely aligned. Now the ONLY time the checks and balances actually work as they were intended to work is when we have divided government, with the presidency and the congress in different hands. Because this is the only time the bodies will truely conflict with each other, resulting in the blunting of extreme actions on any side, and the forging of more reasonable compromises. (Although, I must admit, even in divided government, the congress often rolls over and does not protest at the encroachment of executive power into many areas that it should be protective of.)

Anyway… whenever there is no division, and we have all Republican control, or we have all Democratic control as has occured previously, you get the potental for unchecked abuses by both the congress and the presidency. Given that the other factors which attempted to ensure differences in interests between the branches have eroded or failed, divided government is really needed. Hopefully at the election the Dems will be able to take either the congress, or the presidency, BUT NOT BOTH.