Before the 12th amendment, the presidential candidate who got the second most electoral votes became the vice president. This meant they were usually different parties.
It occurred to me that one thing this achieved was always ensuring that there was someone in the room who would be willing to disagree with the president. He couldn’t surround himself with yes-men.
Can you let us know what country you are talking about in the post?
This community is on a Canadian instance, and we don’t have Presidents.
Having a President and Vice President of different parties presents a powerful motive for the VP’s party to assassinate the President.
You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
In all seriousness, what’s the actual risk of the VP assassinating the president, given their vastly disparate levels of power?
IIRC that’s basically the plot of “House of Cards”. /s
In all seriousness
Depends on if we’re talking Mexican style or Russian style assassinations. IMO the only way a bullet goes in the direction of the US president(ial-candidate) is if they want one to.
But a clandestine conspiracy using the full spectrum of technology from auditory weapons, to poisons, to windows… Gets a little dicey.
what’s the actual risk of the VP assassinating the president
EoD what is the acceptable % increase in risk? Cuz it’s the undeniable increase that’s unacceptable from a security perspective.
From a practicality perspective, at what point does mitigating this risk make the entire partnership unproductive and pointless?
Well, by current standards, nothing the president does is illegal. So once the VP ascends, there is nothing anyone could do about it.
Well, except the next guy in line to be VP I guess…
what’s the actual risk
So he can assume the role of president? That’s a large carrot to dangle before some really sketchy types.
Yeah, I get the motivation. I just meant that the VP seems to have miniscule power compared to the president.
It probably wouldn’t be the vice president themselves organizing the assassination, it would be people who benefit from them being in power.
Fair enough. I could see a corporation or billionaire offing the president by using the VP’s security clearances.
That’s why they’d be motivated to kill the president
My understanding was that this rule led to some pretty bad “strategic voting” to try to organize securing both presidency and vice presidency, and became a tangled political mess that was improved greatly by having them bundled together on one ticket.
Of course, if you want to talk about strategic voting, infinitely better would be to kill FPTP voting.
I think having a single executive in general was a mistake.
Expanding the power of the executive branch is a big part of the problem.
it would not be expanding it would be slicing up the responsibility among several.
You misunderstand, the executive branch WAS expanded too much. It never was meant to have much of the powers it does now. So yes, one person does have more than they should.
certainly. I think though even the initial powers should have been split. I think also deparment heads should have terms and be only removed by acts of congress. basically they sould be independent and the president can initiate termination by asking congress to act.
What if congress formed the cabinet?
they kinda do. they authorize it and decide if a selection is hired for the job. this would just take them into also be part of firing so that they can be more independent in their actions. They actually can be impeached now though. I was thinking more that you reverse the firing so that they don’t have to worry as much. so a president brings up a canidate to congress and they say yeah or nay. I would add he presents the need to remove a canidate and they say nay or yeah.
Good point. I like that. I’d want congress to appoint cabinet members with a veto option from the president with the standard two-thirds vote to override. President can fire pending approval of congress with a simple majority or congress can impeach directly.
Something like a triumvirate would definitely fix a lot of issues we have had.
im not sure if they would fix but it would definately reduce it assuming we did not get three trumps.
three trumps
Trump - Vance - Miller
You know they’d do it.
I’m trying to imagine that ghoul Miller standing in front of a crowd giving a speech. I don’t think that would go well.
I think having a single executive in general was a mistake.
I’m not sure Direct Democracy - see Switzerland - would work here.
Vice president doesn’t have much power. Wouldn’t accomplish much.
Should probably get rid of the presidency and Senate, and just have a large house. Also reform the supreme court so it’s like a rotating pool of federal judges instead of lifetime corruption magnets.
Wouldn’t that just make it easier for one party to capture control of the government?
No? It’d be similar to today, except without the senate giving undue weight to low population areas, and the president doing whatever he wants. You’d probably also want to change the voting system to support ranked choice or similar, while you were waving your magic around.
In what way do you think it would be easier?
Taking over three branches of government would be harder than taking over just one, no?
The judicial is still separate in what I proposed, so there’s still at least two.
I don’t really think the separation of powers really holds up when they’re all elected in the same way, anyway. Not in a two-party system. We have a sort of incidental defense via staggered elections and terms, but as you can see the republicans are happy to collaborate across branches.
With no Senate or presidency, whoever controls the house could just pass a law to add justices until they control the judicial.
That’s how it works now with extra steps. The system doesn’t provide any defense when people are working as a party regardless of their branch.
Vice presidents don’t usually sit around the room. They’re not heavily involved in day to day decisions
Yo VP’s so fat, when they sit around the room, they sit AROUND the room!
But they can if they want to be. It’s not like you can keep them out of the room without explicit orders from the president. And even then, if they force their way in, what is the secret service going to do? Tackle the VP?
Today, that is correct, because the president and VP are generally aligned on issues so there’s no reason to push them out.
On paper the VP’s only real responsibilities are to cast occasional tie-breaking votes and not die.
The tie breaking vote is practically useless if the next step is a veto and you clearly don’t have the votes to overturn it.
In a modern cluster fuck of a world without explicit laws assigning powers and access to the VP, a VP from an opposing party would DEFINITELY be banned from spaces near POTUS, likely under the guise of securing the line of succession.
With a hypothetical Trump/Harris ticket you can be absolutely certain he would try everything in his power to get her locked in a lightless bunker “for safety”
I think it depends on the administration. They certainly should be given line of succession. Their main purpose is to carry on without missing a beat.
But it also greatly increases the motivation for assassinations, as instead of replacing the president with one from his own party, you replace him with the opposite party, likely to much greater political effect.
Sure, that sounds like a fun time now … but imagine in the future we have a Dem elected president and the presidency suddenly becomes Republican because the Dem got assassinated.
The fact that neither Obama nor Trump have been killed shows that with the security around the President, the threat is negligible.
There’s already been a couple times when Trump simply got lucky. If the shooter had better aim, he’d be a goner.
And, historically speaking, the assassination rate of US presidents is quite high. By the numbers, it’s actually by far the most dangerous job in the country.
That’s kind of my point though. Even with the utter incompetence of Trump’s administration eroding security, they still couldn’t get an easy shot. Iran has had a big bounty on Trump’s head for years and nothing.
I think the root is not doing enough to address problematic party politics. That’s the real concern you have here, OP.
This, indeed, was George Washington’s fear. At his farewell address and AFAIK to his death.
I think they needed to accept that party politics are going to happen no matter what and the system needed to accommodate that.
Personally, I think it was a mistake.
It solidified the party ticket.
Having a vice president that came in second means that, if something happens to the President, the country will be led by someone qualified.
As far as checks and balances go, the vice president is the tie breaker in the Senate. With the 12th amendment in place, that vote is essentially the President’s vote.
We would still have a system of parties but the dynamic would be dramatically different.
Finally, the original system meant that most Americans would feel represented. Yes, the VP has little power but they can have lots of influence.
OMG, the USA was founded on RCV?!
