Tag Archives: governance

Trump vs Congress Showdown

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 3, 2025 (Updated 2/19/25)

“The Founders knew they were creating something different and, hopefully lasting. They were visionary. No constitutional democratic republic has survived as long as ours. Maybe our longevity is to the credit of (John) Adams and other Founders who were smart enough not to create a pure democracy or a monarchy, as some preferred, but a democratic republic with three branches of government, each serving as a check and balance of the other.” — Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, (Chapter 15, Pg 265)

The separation of powers and the checks and balances that make our government functional are part of the genius of our Constitution and a reason for its historic longevity.

President Donald Trump’s early actions tell us he rejects the premise of checks and balances and with an unorthodox view of the separation of powers and believes he can muscle his way past them.

The alarm bells are ringing.

The checks and balances are embedded in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution, along with separation of powers among the branches of government, each of which is distinct, function separately but answer to each other and hopefully function as one. I will try to connect my dots here with the disclaimer that I’m not an historian, nor a constitutional scholar. What I do know is that Mr. Trump’s autocratic view of the first three Articles has him speeding along an unfamiliar road without political or ideological GPS.

I’ve always found it helpful to take a step back before leaping forward, so back to history. Continue reading →

Enough is Enough. The President Must Leave

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 8, 2021

When President Trump invited his hard-core supporters to Washington to protest the congressional certification of the electoral college vote declaring Joe Biden the President-Elect, he surely knew what he was doing. He has been toying with and exploiting the emotions of his supporters for years and when they got to Washington, he incited them to head for the US Capitol for a “wild” protest.

The Capitol was desecrated by violence. It hurt. I saw rooms in which I once worked, in hallways and rooms once revered. But the President did not condemn the insurrection; he told the rebellious horde that he loved them.

Only on Thursday, Jan 7, after a category five storm of anger and repudiation did he step before a camera and read from a script that the invasion of the Capitol was wrong.

He should resign the Presidency immediately. Hopefully, everyone around him including his family will encourage him to do so. Continue reading →

Are We Better Than This? Prove It. Deal With It.

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  SEP 15, 2018

“John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: ‘We are better than this; America is better than this.’” — Eulogy for the late Senator John McCain at funeral services in the National Cathedral by former President George W. Bush

John McCain wasn’t alone wanting our politics to be better than this. It would do all of us some good to keep his memory alive more than a couple of weeks, despite what’s going on around us.

We know what ‘this’ is. It only took a few days for McCain’s legacy to turn to dust, replaced with more anger, distrust, dishonesty, hyperventilation, vulgarity, and incivility, and that, exclusive of President Donald Trump’s behavior.

The “this” has continued the erosion of American institutions and the abandonment of American values. I believe the vast majority of Americans agreed with McCain and are fed up with “this.” McCain preached the politics of inclusion and the personal behavior of courage and civility. He didn’t always succeed in putting them into practice, but they were among the values he considered critical to the survival of our grand experiment in self-governance.

Continue reading →

Final Death of Nasserism

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970, but Nasserism, the philosophy he founded, will finally die out in 2012.

Nasser, a charismatic and forceful President of Egypt, was the first Arab leader to meld militarism with socialism to create a new kind of modern governance in the Arab world.

Nasser’s exploits were legendary. Overthrowing the Egyptian monarchy. Creating the United Arab Republic. Seizing the Suez Canal. Attacking and losing to Israel.

He died of a heart attack, not by assassination. His successor, Anwar Sadat was not so lucky. After Sadat concluded a peace treaty with Israel, he was assassinated. Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, will probably be executed sometime this year (just a guess). Continue reading →

Super Committee Failure & Public Judgement

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The death of the super committee on deficit reduction was so painful to watch.

It didn’t even get a decent funeral. But then it didn’t deserve one. Its life was ill begotten and misspent.

The eulogies were a mix of  ‘I told you so’s’ by people and press who told us nothing, and politicians and interest groups pointing the finger of blame at each other—back and forth between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Senators and House members, Congress and the President (how does the Supreme Court always escape blame?), tea partiers and occupiers and on and on.

Nobody apologized for the failure.

The combatants remain defiant. They were still harping at each other the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Some seem to be under the influence of an elixir that has them hallucinating about the next election. They believe if they put off governing for another year, the American people will reward them by electing more politicians of their ilk. They could then, beginning in 2013, impose their political will on the country without any of this nettlesome bickering standing in their way today. Continue reading →

Debt Ceiling Debacle Embarrassing

 

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

A friend who runs a small business told me recently he’s going to make some really tough decisions next week to cut expenses.  Those decisions are going to hurt good people.

I am familiar with people who have started new businesses that are now teetering on the brink of collapse. 

Businesses, big and small, in the housing industry are hurting because of consumer angst about buying or selling.

I know a couple afraid of losing so much of their retirement savings that they won’t be able to slow down when they’d planned.  I talk to young people every week who can’t find jobs and have nowhere to turn.

There are millions like them across America who don’t know where the next paycheck is coming from or how they will support their children or how they will avoid being dependent upon their children in old age.  They are feeling the anxiety of not knowing, the fear of failure, that agony of defeat.  They are real people with real families in real communities, struggling every day because of the uncertainty over the American economy.  They are consumers who won’t spend and manufacturers who won’t produce and bankers who won’t lend because of doubt.

Continue reading →

Don’t Blame the Tea Party

 BY MICKEY EDWARDS

 Reprinted from The Atlantic and Iconoclast.

 If the polls are right–and they are remarkably consistent–Democrats will take a drubbing next week, likely losing control of the House and barely holding on to their majority in the Senate. It is possible that such a powerful repudiation will cause them to engage in some serious soul searching and consider whether they have taken the country in a direction the people (it’s their country, after all) don’t want to go.

Continue reading →