TOW #17: The Perils of Presidentialism

The United States' government, with its executive, legislative and judicial branches always checking and balancing each other, is the pride of the patriotic American people. However, this government is more of a Frankenstein's Monster than an Adonis. In his 1996 essay, Professor of Political Science at Yale University Juan Linz reveals the perennial instability of presidential governments compared to their parliamentary counterparts. While it cannot be denied that there are some merits to the U.S's presidential government, it is historically obvious that America's presidential government is highly unstable.

Linz argues in his essay that the dissident powers of legislative and executive branches in the American government have long been a fault line in the U.S. government. This idea, which essentially points out the dangerous clash between the president and congress regarding who holds the democratic "power of the people" has been a long running theme in American government. During the presidency of accidental president Andrew Johnson, this political disparity almost destroyed the American political structure. Johnson disagreed heavily with the legislative majority Republicans regarding how to carry out Civil War Reconstruction. Johnson ignored the party's obvious majority opinion in the Senate and House and vetoed all bills passed by the party. Heavily annoyed by this stalemate, Republicans impeach Johnson on illegitimate grounds. Johnson was not removed from office and a crisis was averted; however, had he been removed it would have set a dangerous precedent that the legislature could remove the president at any time just because they didn't like his policy. Thus, the constant power struggle between the executive and legislative branches undermines the stability of the American Government.

Despite the relative instability of American Government, there are still benefits to the American political system. The constant checks and balances between the Judicial, Executive and Legislative branches protect the country from polar decision making and excess political expediency. French philosopher Montesquieu believed that government needed checks and balances between its major institutions in order to ensure that no one interest could carry out highly polarized actions. The American system of government upholds this belief as the presidential veto, legislative power to pass bills, and judicial review allows all governmental decisions to be checked before being passed into law. This means that no rash decisions (hopefully) will be pushed through the government into law, but also means that almost nothing ever gets done. So while this system may provide necessary checks, it also is extremely inefficient and overall largely unstable.

America has thus far been able to operate with relative effectiveness under our current system of government. However, as Linz shows in his essay and as history has shown us, there are many faults in America's system that will inevitably lead to its downfall. The question that remains is when?