what's a "knighs"?

If an executive branch is such a bad thing, why is it that all the countries that lack an effective president / king rely so much on the US to project military power anywhere?

I think the real problem with the US executive branch is that so many other countries have abandoned theirs and instead rely on ours, that it's starting to break under the strain.

An interesting point. Still, it seems to me history shows that democracies with a separate executive branch are more prone to despotism than those without.

I think perhaps it's that people setting up other countries don't really understand how weak our executive branch was when it was set up. The power it has today is mostly accrued, and over more than two hundred years. The other branches had a long time to watch this dangerous predator grow in their midst, and are quite adept at dealing with it. At least for now.

It seems to me perhaps other countries decided to model their presidency along what ours is now (or, say, in the last sixty years or so). This definitely seems to have set the fox loose in the hen house, and disaster is the all too common result.

With a proportional parliamentary (PP) system it seems one trades off effectiveness for resilience. With power even more diffuse, and regime change made cheaper and less dangerous, the temptation is to toss the whole lot at any time for any reason. Which makes effective policy making more than a little difficult at the best of times. But it also means everyone's so busy jockeying nobody has time to do anything really destructive.

This is not to say the PP system is superior to the strong executive (SE) system. A study of late 18th century Poland provides an abject example of what happens when a parliamentary system is allowed to run amok. Just that, on average, a PP system tends to be safer for its constituents than an SE system.

Considering that hardly anyone in the west seems to think Arabs are capable of democracy of any sort, I think their choosing what seems to be the safest type of all may end up a good one.

I can't really think of any place that actually uses a strict division of powers as used in the American system. Few such systems for example, actually have a judiciary strong enough to overrule the executive or the legislative. None have a body of common law that restricts all branches from making radical change. The American system works because of just such details. Just having a President, legislature and judiciary won't cut it.

Proportional parliamentary concentrate to much power in formal parties and the indirectly elected party bosses. They also suffer from granting to much influence to extremist minority parties.

I think the PP system is a recipe for ethnic polarization. America would never have survived in such a system. Investing office in individuals who have no legal obligation to parties combined with a balanced regional representational system works far better in a multicultural society prone to internal divisions. The American system forces politicians to seek broad cross-regional, multi-ethnic coalitions before they can even begin to think of running for national office. .The PP systems lets politicians concentrate on a specialized minority and they have little incentive to seek compromise before or after elections.

> why is it that all the countries that lack an effective president / king rely so much on the US to project military power anywhere?

The point is, effectiveness of government is dangerous to domestic freedom. The answer to your question is, "Because we have a more effective government, and accept the dangers to domestic freedom which that implies."

Strong militaries are also, for obvious reasons, dangerous to democracy. The US deals with this problem by requiring soldiers, particularly career officers, to change jobs and organizations every few years. You never build up a critical mass of loyalty to the chain of command before it all changes. You also take an efficiency hit, but life is tradeoffs. (One of the reasons the UK punches above its weight militarily is the British regimental system, which solves the problem without the efficiency hit, but which is unique to British society and can't be copied.)

Oh yeah, watch out for the Knights who say "knigh."

There are three things which I feel insulate the United States from the SE issues you mention.

One is that there simply isn't a history of the executive assuming otherwise untoward powers without the validation of their intent by the legislative branch. Quite the contrary. If this was no barrier earlier in our history it is now. Even the most egregious of Lincoln's wartime emergency powers were promptly confirmed by the Congress once they were in session, and were only undertaken in the abeyance of a sitting legislature.

Secondly the American President has no powers to interfere with the Congress meeting if they are of a mind otherwise. This is quite different from other Strong Executives worldwide, who can even dissolve the legislative body.

Thirdly, our system is distinctly tripolar. To retain the appearance of legitimacy if acting in defiance of the legislature, a President would have to have the Supreme Court in their hip pocket. That state of affairs would not be trivial to maintain.

> Tom Perkins said:
"There are three things which I feel insulate the United States from the SE issues you mention."

There is merit in keeping busybodies busy not getting much done in government. The US has term limits on the Presidency and frequent turnover in the military. What is badly needed is some way to get members of the House to retire as they start to get good at good at working the system, making room to absorb younger less experienced busybodies. The formal way would be a constitutional amendment to set term limits. The informal way would be to reintroduce potentially deadly physical confrontations among our legislators. Check out these videos of Taiwan's parlament.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1o68Vip5O4&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USjyN8Zlvtw&mode=related&search=

Note the relative lack of elderly legislators in Taiwan's parlament compared to the US. No white hair! Their fights keep young productive busybodies busy doing nothing while seeming to move older legislators out to retirement.

Shannon: Your point is again well taken, but even if the PP system is a recipe for polarization, so what? Keep in mind, as far as I'm concerned, ineffective government is a *plus* when the rule of law is enforced. I don't particularly care if the government is effective as long as it stays out of my hair.

Bob: True, but one of the things career military here criticize consistently is our "up or out" policies. More than one person, and rightly, has said this is the Peter Principle in action. It's *extremely* important not to project the problems we have with our own system onto people who are just now building their own.

Tom: Wow. Just, wow. To know what Lincoln did to preserve the union and then say that the captive Congress rubber-stamping it somehow made it legitimate is to me the epitome of 20-20 hindsight. Lincoln tossed the entire Maryland legislature in jail without cause to prevent them from seceding. Exactly what do you think would've prevented him from tossing Congress itself in there along with it, were it to prove a danger to the union?

George: The only problem with term limits, as I understand the argument, is that the Fathers considered them and rejected them. Now, they also considered uniting the vice president of the opposing party with the president of the victor as a Good Idea, so I won't say they were omnipotent. Still, we managed to (barely) survive the 46-72 conresses without term limits, and the current version is nowhere near as powerful as they were. You want term limits, fine. Pass the requisite amendments. In the meantime, well, exactly how does this relate to Iraqis not blowing themselves up again?

scott,

I don't particularly care if the government is effective as long as it stays out of my hair.

That is because you have never known any state save the rule of law. For the people of Iraq and the most of the rest of the world that is not true. If democratic government cannot provide at least basic public order and security, then people will turn to authoritarianism just to survive.

It's true that the executive branch is definitely the branch that could most easily become despotic. I forget who said that "the role of the American president is to fool people into thinking we have a king," but that's really quite close to the truth. The US president is the top of the entire military chain of command, a position historically occupied by kings and emperors. In a very real sense, the military NEEDS a king, in order to maintain discipline and focus the efforts of all its soldiers.

There are three things that distinguish the King of the US from any other monarch in history. One is that he is not in direct control of his lineage. Every four years, he must not just convince his troops, but the entire population of his kingdom, that he is still more fit for the job than anyone else, and he is required by law to hand over the crown to a successor every eight years. While he can declare who he feels would be his best successor, it is still up to the people to decide if said successor is more worthy than anyone else who would claim the throne.

The second is in the elections themselves. The electoral college is an amazingly effective bulwark against the population of the two or three largest US cities being able to overrule the rest of the nation, which is how the "presidents-for-life" often come to power: by promising the cronies and underlings they've gathered into their capital cities a wonderful future by robbing the scummy peasants tilling the fields. In a straight popular vote, this ensures not only a perpetual win for a given political party, but an inevitable belief in the superiority of the aristocrats and the unworthiness of the peasants, eventually leading to the latter being excluded from the political process entirely.

The third is, unfortunately, still a "gentleman's agreement" than could legally be broken at any time: the fact that no incoming president has ever tried to jail or kill his predecessor or their supporters, in order to ensure they may reign unchallenged. Nearly all kings learned to fear being deposed or even executed by their own children, and often were forced to kill them to defend their own lives. The same happens in many democracies when presidents find themselves under arrest for real or imagined crimes they committed in office. The successors inevitably realize the same could happen to them (and almost certainly would, if the supporters of their persecuted ex-president ever came to power), and begin fighting for their office as if their lives depended on it, mobilizing their military to make sure the elections always turn out in their favor, no matter how many "traitors" they have to kill to guarantee it.

Given the hysterical demands for the trial, imprisonment, and/or execution of George W. Bush I've seen online, I wonder if that will be how democracy in the US ends.