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Is the Job of President of the United States Still Doable?
National Journal columnist and campaign analyst Charlie Cook says it’s time for President Bush to fire most of his senior staff and start over. He suggests several replacements, naming old hands with a lot of experience in previous administrations. The difficulty the Bush administration finds itself in is evidence of just how tough the political arena has become. Politics chews you up and spits you out. “You’re riding high in April, Shot down in May,” as Frank Sinatra used to sing. It wasn’t very long ago that the Bush administration was viewed as the “imperial presidency,” amassing power and control. Karl Rove was considered a brilliant political strategist who could do no wrong. Today, Rove is in legal trouble and the administration is so weak it may not achieve any of its priorities over the next three years.
With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, we haven’t had a really successful president for many decades (and many people would disagree that Reagan was successful). And in my opinion the solution is not simply electing a quality, capable person as president. I believe the job of governing the United States, as currently defined, is impossible for any individual. It has become too big a job.
We have to start asking ourselves, is the job of president of the United States, and even leading Congress, still doable? I believe in some ways it’s not. We’ve come to demand and expect so much out of the federal government that the reality is it will never meet our needs and wants. We want government to take care of us from cradle to grave, handle every disaster and emergency, feed us, house us, educate us, provide us health care, make sure our caps cover our ears, button our jackets, tie up our little booties and wipe our noses. And do all of these things without ballooning the federal debt or taxing us too much.
With those expectations, the job of leading this country is simply not doable. So what is the solution? I believe there is actually a solution. It is to devolve much of what the federal government does back to the states where it should be anyway. Let the federal government do what it was designed to do in the Constitution. Let states and local governments handle all the rest. The job of president in a properly balanced federal system would once again become doable.
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined," Madison explained in Federalist No. 45. "Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." Since federal jurisdiction extends "to certain enumerated objects only," Madison stresses in Federalist No. 39, the Constitution "leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects."
Oh, how far we have strayed. Certainly, life today is vastly more complicated than it was when the Constitution was drafted. There is a million times more interstate commerce and complicated interaction on many issues that require solutions that cross state lines, among them environmental and civil rights matters. But I happen to believe the federal system devised by the Framers is actually the best model for government even in today’s modern, high-tech, interconnected world.
In fact, the Internet or a network of computers offers an excellent metaphor for how the states and the federal government ought to work together. The age of the mainframe computer, with all control and power at the center, has long been replaced with intelligent networks of PCs with intelligence and capacity dispersed out on the periphery, but networked together for plenty of interaction and collaboration. Today, successful businesses and other organizations are flatter and more decentralized so decisions can be made at lower levels closer to the manufacturing process and customer. Just as in a computer network, states would have to agree on standards and protocols to deal with complex interstate issues. But the motto ought to be “national standards, local control,” not top-down, bureaucratic dictates from a one-size-fits-all central government.
Devolution of power to states would require whole new levels of cooperation and collaboration among states, but in today’s networked world it could be done. Today we have mainframe government with the mainframe so full of data that it can barely function.
Could states deal with the issues of health care, Medicare, Medicaid, education, etc.?
Remember, the welfare situation became enormously better when the federal government basically turned it back to the states. Welfare rolls are vastly smaller today than when the federal government was dictating everything.
I would rather see 50 governors and 50 legislatures can deal with the problems of society than one president and one Congress. Let’s move the functions of government (except those constitutionally designated for the federal level) to lower levels where they can be more effectively and efficiently handled. Stop sending all those dollars to the bloated, out-of-control federal government and leave more at state and local levels. State and local governments are a thousand times more fiscally responsible than the deficit-ridden federal government. If states or corporations ran their finances the way the federal government does, people would be voted out of office and be going to jail.
Doing this would be very difficult and, given current circumstances, almost impossible to implement. But our political leaders ought to start talking about it. The federal government is a mess because it has gotten too large. We expect far more than it can deliver. We won’t have successful leaders at the federal level until the federal government is downsized and right-sized.
Blog Watch
Rep. Steve Urquhart plays off the UEA’s “No Excuses” campaign to suggest some education reform of his own: Merit pay, better math performance, easier termination for bad teachers, higher pay for starting teachers and school choice. . . . Dave Fletcher features a “very sped-up video” of construction at the State Capitol campus.
Washington Watch
Bill Would Cut Medicare/Medicaid
The Senate Finance Committee has approved a measure “…that nets savings of $10 billion in Medicare and Medicaid over five years while protecting the vulnerable beneficiaries of these two vital programs,” according to a press release from Sen. Orrin Hatch. The Finance Committee bill proposes $8 billion in savings, coupled with $3.8 billion in new spending, half of which would support Medicaid recipients hit by recent hurricanes.
Utah is Not ‘Best States for Workers’
A study released Tuesday by UMass Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute ranks Utah fifth from the bottom, tied with Mississippi and South Carolina, for best states for workers, according to an Associated Press story. Delaware ranked first and Louisiana last in The "Decent Work in America" study, which measured where workers were treated best, based on factors of job opportunities, job quality and workplace fairness.
House Bill Limits ‘Wal-Mart Bank’
Reuters reports that the House Banking Committee is expected to complete its work on Thursday on a bill that would let banks open branches across state lines—but not industrial banks, like the one sought in Utah by Wal-Mart. “Banks are currently allowed to open branches in other states through special state-to-state arrangements among 20 states and the District of Columbia,” according to Reuters.
Oil, Gas Applications to Rise
The BLM expects the number of applications for oil and gas drilling on federal land to jump 32 percent from 2004 to 2006, according to an Associated Press report. The agency expects to receive about 9,200 new applications in 2006. To handle the increase, the agency is drawing staff from other agencies and putting them in seven offices in five states, one of which is the Vernal, Utah office.
Utah Trivia
(From "Utah Trivia" compiled by Allan Kent Powell and Miriam B. Murphy)
Q: What former U.S. president was awestruck at the sight of Rainbow Bridge in the moonlight on a 1913 visit to the national monument?
A: Theodore Roosevelt.
Q: Who was the second Utahn, after Brigham Young, to be represented in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol?
A: Philo T. Farnsworth, "the father of Television."
Q: What county had the greatest number of cattle in 1995?
A: Box Elder.
Q: What county leads the state in dairy production?
A: Cache.
Q: Utah wool growers annually lose on average what percentage of their flocks to predators?
A: 10 percent.
Q: What metropolitan area receives the largest percentage of electricity generated by the Intermountain Power Plant near Delta?
A: Los Angeles.
Q: What high post in a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency did Edward P. Cliff, a Heber City native, attain in 1962?
A: Chief forester of the United States.
Q: In what year did state governors first meet, in Utah, to discuss conservation of natural resources?
A: 1908. |
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