- Location
- NYC (né Falkirk)
- Pronouns
- he/him
Seemingly one of those cliches-but-not alternate history ideas is the United States developing a political system with the head of government and the democratic legitimacy of at least part of the executive arising from the command and confidence of its legislature. Standing in contrast to the executive being wholly invested in the Presidency as OTL.
There is not really a single POD that could lead to the establishment of such a system (well, maybe one...) but there have been eras where the motions could have been started that would lead the country down a path to a strong legislature instead of the elected monarchy it has been so far in its history.
*Incidentally, taxes contributed as a method of apportionment is something I don't think I've seen done for any theoretical election maps - would be an interesting thing to model a modern election against.
**Another aspect of this system that was abandoned would be that Senators from one state would vote together, as with electors in the electoral college. That this was abandoned removed the Senate as a bastion of federalism and greatly increased the power of individual senators over members of the House and the state legislators that nominated them.
***Andrew Jackson (what is it with Presidents named Andrew that draw the ire of Congress) vs. the Anti-Jacksonians is another option for this, but a more difficult one in my opinion.
****With the exception of Grover Cleveland, who perhaps more than any other figure kept the lights on for presidential power during this era.
*****Cannon is perhaps more of a Progressive Era figure, but the groundwork for his power was laid earlier.
******They even hoped that direct election of Senators would break the continuous cycle of deadlock.
*******The most powerful office in the House of Representatives is the Speaker, unlike in Parliamentary systems were the presiding officer is expected to be impartial. Whenever Congress has been at the height of its powers men like Henry Clay, Reed, and Cannon have acted as the leader of their party in the House whilst occupying this office.
********Largerly due to travel difficulties, the reason Washington and Adams were inaugurated in April was because Congress and the Senate did not have a quorum until almost a month after the election.
There is not really a single POD that could lead to the establishment of such a system (well, maybe one...) but there have been eras where the motions could have been started that would lead the country down a path to a strong legislature instead of the elected monarchy it has been so far in its history.
- The Constitutional Option - There are varying stages along the development of the US constitution where Congress could have wound up more powerful than it actually did. The Virginia Plan would have seen the lower house "popularly" elected and representatives apportioned by their number of free inhabitants or taxes contributed*; the upper house would have been similarly apportioned and its members nominated by the state legislatures and and elected by the lower house; both houses would elect the executive. This was supported by larger states with growing populations and opposed by the smaller states, who drafted the New Jersey Plan in response which had a unicameral legislature composed of equal representatives from each state. The Connecticut Compromise broadly gave us the system eventually adopted, with the lower house popularly elected and apportioned by population and the upper house having two members for every state** and appointed by the state legislatures. Even with this its possible a strong legislature could have developed under a Vice President other than John Adams, who as Presiding Officer proceeded to turn the upper house into a joke - the House passed the form of address of the President as simply 'George Washington, President of the United States' but some senators fancied 'Highness' or 'Excellency' and Adams agreed with them so instigated a debate that lasted weeks before Mr. President was settled on; would routinely debate, harangue and lecture the members from his chair in ways that would give John Bercow pause; and served as a rubber stamp for the administration and the Federalists including voting against a bill that would have required Senate consent for removal of executive branch officials confirmed by the Senate. This is the area where perhaps one POD could have taken the US down the route to a parliamentary system - either the adoption of the Virginia Plan or a different Vice President, but the former is perhaps too implausible and for the latter the best candidates are also Virginians so would be impossible to become VP to Washington, and there are few potential candidates from the North outside of Adams and even those would perhaps be just as likely to be cosy with the administration.
- The Republican Option - Disagreements between the President and Congress were nothing new by the 1860s*** but they were taken to a new level in the fights between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republican
AgendaCongress. Johnson tried to speedily reintegrate the former Confederate States back into the Union, so Congress refused to seat their legislators and enacted legislation to overturn the Black Codes being set up in those states. He would veto their bills, they would overrule him, and back and forth it would go. They limited his ability to dismiss Cabinet officials, he tried it anyway, they impeached him, he narrowly avoided conviction. Congress would flex its muscles for the rest of the century and would grow fat and corrupt with the development of the lobby system against a string of weak Presidents****. This also saw the paradoxical development of the Democratic Party seeing its support based amongst ex-Confederates in the South and poorer immigrants and Catholics in Northern cities; whilst the Republicans had their support amongst Union veterans, businessmen and farmers in the North as well as blacks in the South. The failures of Reconstruction would see the latter disenfranchised and the Solid South born. Against those weak presidencies the House and Senate were paragons of stability, especially after the Democrats were able to lift the last vestiges of Reconstruction and disenfranchise blacks. Would a harsher, radical reconstruction and a more total dominance of postbellum politics by the Republican Party have seen a lasting shift in power from the Presidency to the legislature? Without the elction of Grover Cleveland, itself achieved by a mix of the Solid South, Catholic voters and Republicans disenchanted with the perceived corruption of their James G. Blaine; would the presidency have become a veritable rubber stamp for the Republican Congress? House Speakers like Thomas Brackett Reed and Joseph Gurney Cannon***** were OTL amongst the most powerful men in the country during or in the immediate aftermath of this era, how much more powerful might they or their successors have become? - The Progressive Option - The Progressive Era was the last era of true political experimentation in the United States. There is a lot to criticise the people involved with the activism and reform of the era - being overwhelmingly white and middle class, the support of eugenics and prohibition - but in a way we could do with such a movement and willingness to try new things today. Amongst the changes wrought by this era were the direction election of Senators and the instigation of primary elections, the goal of these was to take political power away from political bosses and party machines and put it back into the hands of the people. A century later these changes have become just as corrupt and ineffectual as the systems they sought to replace******. Congress was still very powerful at this time, as much as the Theodore Roosevelt is held up as the all-conquering mustachioed gunshot-to-the-chest-no-selling bull-moose-fucking lion-eating bespectacled man's man in office he found himself frequently challenged by the aforementioned Cannon as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Power would not truly shift back to the Presidency until the tenure of noted fan of the number fourteen and probable vampire demon Woodrow Wilson. Without Wilson perhaps Congress remains on the path to becoming the dominant branch of government. Wilson was one who saw the country as moving towards a Parliamentary system, so perhaps he instead decides to go with what he sees as the flow and seeks entry into Congress with the intention of becoming leader of the Democratic Party in the House; perhaps others will see this as another way of breaking the power of the bosses and machines and United States parties gain a flavour recognisable to those in Europe. That this would come at a time when the Socialist Party was still active and the Bull Moose Progressive still existing on paper, so we might see others follow suit. This, with the continuing 19th century trend of weak Presidents, might eventually lead to constitutional amendments limiting the power of the President in favour of Congress and eventually ending up with a Prime Minister of the United States in everything but name*******.
*Incidentally, taxes contributed as a method of apportionment is something I don't think I've seen done for any theoretical election maps - would be an interesting thing to model a modern election against.
**Another aspect of this system that was abandoned would be that Senators from one state would vote together, as with electors in the electoral college. That this was abandoned removed the Senate as a bastion of federalism and greatly increased the power of individual senators over members of the House and the state legislators that nominated them.
***Andrew Jackson (what is it with Presidents named Andrew that draw the ire of Congress) vs. the Anti-Jacksonians is another option for this, but a more difficult one in my opinion.
****With the exception of Grover Cleveland, who perhaps more than any other figure kept the lights on for presidential power during this era.
*****Cannon is perhaps more of a Progressive Era figure, but the groundwork for his power was laid earlier.
******They even hoped that direct election of Senators would break the continuous cycle of deadlock.
*******The most powerful office in the House of Representatives is the Speaker, unlike in Parliamentary systems were the presiding officer is expected to be impartial. Whenever Congress has been at the height of its powers men like Henry Clay, Reed, and Cannon have acted as the leader of their party in the House whilst occupying this office.
********Largerly due to travel difficulties, the reason Washington and Adams were inaugurated in April was because Congress and the Senate did not have a quorum until almost a month after the election.