Quote:
Originally Posted by albionmoonlight
Now I am confused. You are a libertarian. Seems to me you should be very against a strong federal executive and all for a strong Congress. Congress is a slow deliberative body. The President is one person who can actually get things done. A strong President vis a vis Congress means WAY more federal intervention in our lives.
The best situation, of course, is a Congress, President, and Judiciary that are in balance. In that situation, things coming out of the fed tend to take the longest and have some sort of a broad mandate supporting them (and, as an added bonus, are constitutional).
It seems that if one wants the most possible federal involvement in our day to day lives, then one wants a strong president and a neutered Congress and Supreme Court. In that case, anything from wiretaps, to federal involvement in family, tort, and property law, to tax increases can be zipped through without any occasion for anyone to object.
Or, now that I re-read your message, did you actually mean that the best thing for the President is to be a strong political player. Not the best thing for the Country?
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Actually it's neither, although one can debate whichever is a worse scenario. Congress is the one with the pursestrings and the "devil-in-the-details" legislation, usually declaring any proposed legislation from Executive to be DOA, or at best, guidelines to add on whatever they wish. To me, the length of time to enact legislation is irrelevant - it what comes out of that body that affects all of us, in some way or form. One of Bush's biggest failures is his inability to veto any legislation during the Rep. dominated Congress (as well as its rubber-stamping). Taking it to an extreme, I actually want no legislation to come out of Congress, except what is granted to them Constitutionally and to significantly pare down current legislative-mandated bureacracies and taxations. The same for Executive. Realistically, I want gridlock. I guess that would mean a strong Executive with the balls to veto and a Congress being forced to scale back.