This is a simple question. You cannot have a King if you have no place in government for him to sit. It is that simple. Remove the throne and he either has to stand or sit on the floor.
This question has many levels well below politics and memes. I wrote ICE and the “Melting Pot” last month to explore where all this turmoil chaos is coming from. In short, when I say that things are not working anymore I am not referring the the rules of the Senate or even Constitutional law. The chaos is the manifestation of a deeper conflict that has been intensifying since the possibility of JFK (an Irish Catholic) getting elected crashed their party. All real power was held by the descendants of English Protestant colonists (as God intended) but they have become a demographically shrinking portion of our population that, as I point out in Melting Pot, is having a hard time, panicky even, dealing with that fact. ‘White” people have been gradually eased to the side and they fear that they are losing the zero sum (in their minds) game of cultural and political prominence. They no longer get to assume that they can sit at the head of the table — and do not like it. An open invitation is not enough! That is the subconscious fear motivating the Great Replacement theory. Why else act so badly?
Sure, a few have said that we don’t have a king; we have a President. Well, if that were true, why are we having “No Kings” protests? A monarchy (king) is just a government by one person, the “mono” part of monarchies. They go seriously bad when that one person is not accountable to anyone but himself. Sound familiar? It should. POTUS has become a king where we opted for the four year lease, not the option to buy.
There has been a lot of conversation here on the Kos about various constitutional amendments and endless discussion about the current level of lawlessness and corruption that seems to overwhelm us. However, these are but symptoms of something deeper than just a person or a statute or a way to invoke the 25th or how to get an unprecedented third impeachment. We are no longer the same country and culture that was present in 1789. Back then, only Wealthy, Anglo-Saxon (British) Protestants had any real say — they wrote the Constitution by themselves for themselves. This is not to say that Jefferson and Washington were not well meaning but they were setting up a government for newly separated colonies comprised of men just like themselves not the ignored women or enslaved Africans. Remember that the biggest sin that FDR committed was that he “betrayed his class”. That matters now that we are no longer 13 lightly populated 18th century English colonies but a 330 million strong nation of widely diverse cultures and ethnicities. The old rules don’t work anymore. Our country has evolved through the struggles of all the rest of us over these last few centuries and the vast majority of us have no interest in rolling back our hard won gains only to have neo-colonizers rule us again. There is no going back.
For those of us of European descent, certainly the “Founding Fathers” and most of of the rest of us European immigrants, the way we’ve organized ourselves is both telling and so assumed as to be invisible to us. This became very clear when a Native American friend of mine said this (paraphrased, not a direct quote):
People of European descent forget just how novel even representative democracy is to your culture. You have had 1,000’s of years of history where societies have been kingdoms and empires — pyramid structures. The concept of everyone sitting in a circle is new to you. The U.S. has only been a democracy since the 1960s with the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and Native American voting rights in 1968.
(Our) Native cultural heritage is not a pyramid but a circle. Not only are decisions made by consensus (a long time for impatient Europeans) but, and this is the more important point, even a child could stand up to say something in council and everyone else would stop and listen.
The key point here is in the difference between a culture in the form of a pyramid and a culture in the form of a circle. We have been in and around the pyramid, i.e. hierarchical European culture so long that we cannot see it anymore. The symbols of Kings, kingdoms, empires are everywhere. Just flip through a Christian Hymnal and see all the monarchy references. Even the default European religion, Christianity and, before that, the relationships in the various “pagan” pantheons, follows this form. The obvious example could be the Vatican (still using the organization, garments, and even names of Imperial Rome) but the form permeates everything from King David through Jesus Christ as the “King of Kings”, a term invented and applied long after he was gone and his movement became a “Church” culturally distant from its Palestinian/Jewish roots. Even Elvis is a “King”. For example, let us look at the Roman Governor Pilate’s question during the trial leading up to Jesus of Nazareth’s execution, “Are you the king of the Jews?”, he asks to which Jesus replies, “It is you who say it.”1 Note that this reply is a more carefully accurate translation of the ancient text than the King James, NIV or RSV translations which say, “Yes, it is as you say”, reflecting a 16th century Protestant theological viewpoint. In other words, there is no “Yes” in the early text, only a deflection, “It is you who say it (not me).” We could wander off into biblical scholarship here but we will leave it with the English Protestant translators letting their cultural assumptions fill in the blanks for something that was always an ambiguous social order for Jewish society. Let the judge and prophet Samuel explain:
Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. “Look,” they said to him, … “you are old and your sons do not follow your ways. So give us a king to rule over us, like the other nations”.
…
[Samuel] said, “These are the rights of the king who is to reign over you. … He will take your sons and assign them to his chariotry and cavalry. … He will make them … make his weapons fo war … He will also take your daughters … He will take the best of your fields and give them to his officials...2
Sound familiar? Samuel was the last of the “Judges”, part-time leaders whose primary job was to settle disputes. The whole of this and following chapters narrate the sorry tale of King Saul followed by Kings David and Solomon (the not so bad ones, or at least better PR) followed by the series of corrupt minor kings that ended with the collapse of the kingdoms and exile.
I bring this up because these chapters are a cautionary tale, first to a primitive people (Israel) who were succumbing to the wider Mediterranean (and later European) culture and second, to remind us in the here and now that kings and cultural hierarchies were and still are not inevitable but cultural choices.
Centuries later, kings may seem natural to many of us because the culture we have grown up in has been this way for so long. It seems natural. But as my Native American friend, who grew up on the Rez, told me, it is not universal or natural; it was a cultural choice. Ironically, we inherited it from our ancestor immigrants who were tired of being at the bottom of the pyramid. The indigenous people, whom the Founding Fathers asked for help and ideas in forming a government, did not and still do not see that as natural at all — and they are not alone. The “circle” is fully common across American indigenous culture.3 These ideas helped form what was to become the first form of American government.
Which comes first, Physics or Culture?
This may seem a strange idea to introduce in a political essay but it isn’t. I recommend a book “The Dawn of Everything” that re-examines what we have assumed world history to be.3 It is not a universal and set progression from hunter gatherer to tribe to kingdom to empire. Maybe in the European case but not everywhere. The discussion above is about two ways to organize a group of humans. It comes down to a “pyramid” or a “circle”. There may be more but history has shown that although there may be blends or variations on the theme, structurally, these are the two options. So briefly let’s look at the two.
Native American decision making culture is a “circle”. As my friend pointed out, “Name an animal on the American continents that could be domesticated?” This is where physics comes in. There wasn’t any until Europeans imported horses, cattle, and sheep. This is the most important question because everything else follows. How does one domesticate a bison or an elk? Good luck with that. Deer might seem easier but they skittish, too small to carry anything and live and hide in the woods. Fish aren’t much good either. Alpaca could be a candidate but they live a continent away in the Andes. All of the animals were portable protein but marginal transportation options. They also do not herd very well; Bison herd but by the millions… The only one left is the human. To move anywhere, the tribe had to walk. If they wanted to bring along their kit, they carried it on their back. Native cultures did have small boats if there was navigable water nearby and they invented the wheel but only for toys — there was nothing to pull anything bigger. They also knew metallurgy but on a small scale (gold, silver, copper) because an industrial process requires transportation; see horse. Note that as soon as they saw a horse, they knew immediately its worth (and stole a few). Whereas domesticated animals can scale, both as a protein source and “horsepower”, humans only scale 1:1.
This creates the pressure for forming a “circle”. Since everything needed to survive needed to be done by humans, everyone in the clan was important to the task. If you want everybody pulling in the same direction, you invent and then embed into the culture a decision making process that listens to everyone (even the children) first and takes the time to decide by consensus.
On the other hand, if your tribe evolved on the steppes of Asia where there were herds of horses everywhere, you have options that can scale. Sheep and bovines (cattle, oxen) roam around (not very fast) eating the plentiful grass. You first domesticate the placid sheep and avoid the big elk and ornery bison. You now have a scalable and readily available source of food. With a horse you can travel and carry things like iron ore and fuel. Large organizations of humans are now possible and hierarchies help them scale.
Both cultural forms have value. They also have limitations. The “circle” does not scale well. The “pyramid” almost always degenerates into violence, stagnant decay, and destruction. The Israelites figured that out long before Samuel. The Founding Fathers knew about both because they could consult the one up close and lived in the other for generations.
Now that we have set the stage for the Constitution, let us look at what the colonies first tried. The Articles of Confederation were an attempt at the “circle” idea they learned from the Six Nations Confederation but they were missing one key cultural ingredient. Native culture has a deep understanding that they are both totally dependent on Nature and in order to survive in it, every person is necessary and valuable. Consensus among everyone then becomes a paramount value. Every voice is heard and considered before decisions because getting it wrong can be catastrophic for everybody. Getting consensus in the Continental Congress did not have the same urgency to Europeans accustomed to giving and obeying orders. Something else had to be done. Hence a Constitution which had an Executive (the President) as its major new feature.
Times have changed
We will get to issues today but first, I’ll mention a YouTube video of an interview with Richard Miniter, a journalist and author of history. He makes a key point at about the 8:50 mark where he points out to his younger English interviewers that what he is describing in English history, while largely forgotten in the UK is still current and relevant, almost frozen in time, today in the U.S. The time he is describing was recent history to Washington and Jefferson.
In fairness to the Founding Fathers, they could only operate from history, not the future. They did an improvement to the civic culture at that time and in that place but that time was of a king who still had immense power and a Parliament of growing but still limited power. The key point going forward is that full English democracy indeed followed the American one but it also evolved beyond it. The “other” colonies also learned from us but have also evolved beyond us as we will see below.
In the beginning we had the same three institutions of the “Mother Country” but with some changes. Instead of a Parliament of a “Commons” and “Lords” there is a Congress with “Representatives” and “Senators”. Instead of a King as the executive, we got a President. The Senate (eventually) got elected whereas the Lords was, like the King, hereditary. But in between elections, the President did what a King would do and, until the 17th Amendment, the Senate was the exclusive domain of state legislatures which were mostly dominated by the Plantation owner class, our own aristocracy.
The only real change was fixed election cycles. The English Parliament had none, The longest “sitting” was 18 years (8 May 1661 to 24 January 1679), very recent history to the Founders as they wrote the Constitution. The English parliament eventually moved to a fixed maximum and the option for shorter “sittings” which is more responsive than our fixed terms.
The topic is about the Presidency and my title alludes to its betrayal. Miniter hints at our problem when he remarked that England’s past is still our present. The structure of our government has really evolved little since that frozen moment in time when we broke free politically but remained attached culturally. Washington chose not to be a king although more than a few wanted him to be one, even wanting to address him so and wanting him to run for at least a third term. He insisted on being addressed as ‘Mister President”, not “Your Excellency” as others wanted and he stepped down after just two terms, both setting precedents that some subsequent holders of the office would have liked otherwise. John Adams, for example had very strong authoritarian tendencies typical of the Puritan ideas of his native Massachusetts. George Washington formed the Presidency by precedent but the tendency toward monarchy was always there. Precedent is pliable and only enforced by agreements among “gentlemen”.
English Democracy evolved but…
The strength of a written Constitution is that it is written down. This is also a weakness as we have discovered the hard way in recent years. The UK does not have a written Constitution as such but there is a body of law and custom that was created to bind what government does. There have also been events that operated outside what would be considered “settled law” that made significant changes as their government evolved.
The first event in the relationship between the king and, at least, the aristocracy was Magna Carta in 1215. King John followed most kings going all the way back in Christian history to King Saul. He had absolute power and (typically) abused it.
When there is no other choice, you sign...
It’s relevance here is only in two places. First, it established Habeas Corpus, something the #47 Administration has been trying to re-litigate and second, and much more important, it was a confrontation between King John and the aristocracy that the king lost starting the slow rollback of the Divine Right of Kings. This key action by the Nobility curbed the European tendency toward absolute monarchy; nothing for the common citizen yet and not much for “our betters” — but a start. Poor King John did not want to sit down and sign it but the guys around him had pointy things and they made him an offer he could not refuse… This was the first restraint to the absolute, unaccountable power of a king in England.
The second restraint happened right around the time of the founding of the American colonies. Charles I’s accession to the throne in 1625 was just 9 years before the founding of Harvard University in 1636. We don’t need to go into his quarrel with Parliament beyond noting that the quarrel over his perogatives resulted in his trial and execution.
Charles I on trial. He lost.
The end result was civil war and by the time his son Charles II became king after the Restoration, Parliament had asserted its power and denied his assertion of Sovereign Immunity which was the beginning of constitutional monarchy. Here is another issue we are now re-litigating…
If we look closely at the engraving, Charles is in the center facing the commissioners (members of the House). To his right is the Solicitor General John Cook who conducted the prosecution. From Wikipedia:
Standing immediately to the right of the King, he began to speak, but he had uttered only a few words when Charles attempted to stop him by tapping him sharply on the shoulder with his cane and ordering him to "Hold". Cook ignored him and continued, so Charles poked him a second time and rose to speak, but Cook continued. At that point Charles, incensed at being ignored, struck Cook across the shoulder with his cane so forcefully that the ornate silver tip broke off, rolled down Cook's gown and clattered onto the floor between them. Nobody was willing to pick it up for him, so Charles had to stoop down to retrieve it himself.
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article leaves out an important detail, namely, how the House interpreted his stooping down to pick up tip of his cane that had rolled on to the floor. In stooping down he “bowed” to the seated House members, a gesture done by an inferior to show respect to the authority of the person he is bowing to. Far fetched? Sure. A stretch? Right again. But the “optics” were there and time does not reverse and replay. He bowed to the House and every King and Queen since has had little choice but to accept. Such things are not in the literal text of law or Constitution but that does not matter. Legal documents, even opinions about them are the smallest part when compared to how society and culture interprets and understands the context in which that document or opinion exists.
Things got messy again and after Charles II reign and James II, who fled the country, Parliament imposed a Bill of Rights that William and Mary had to sign establishing a constitutional monarchy and the power of Parliament as we see today.
In a later step, the House of Lords was reformed beginning in 1911. That eliminated its power to veto legislation. The Hereditary Peers Act in 2026 removed all remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
This history of the evolution of Westminster could seem a meander through UK history except for one thing. These were evolutionary steps toward fundamental change in the democracy of the UK that took place after the colonies were formed. Some of them were recent history to the Founders but changes like this take time to fully evolve into settled practice and custom. Having a king sign away his (and her) powers is one thing, working out how that actually works takes time. Note that the significant societal change of the Industrial Age resulting in “Labour” governments and universal suffrage didn’t happen until Victoria’s reign, long after our Civil War.
The King is still the King. He just can’t act like one
All of the power is still in the King’s name. The Prime Minister does govern but in the King’s name, as in the “King’s Speech” that the monarch delivers at the opening of Parliament. The words that the King reads are not his own. They are written and approved by the Prime Minister and government. He is given all the power but he is also prevented from using it. This is a bit of almost unintentional wisdom. An ambitious man may covet such power but it is out of reach because the only one who has it cannot use it or give it away.
Parliamentary evolution continued in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as they established their own constitutional governments in the early 20th century. Australia openly acknowledges that they learned much on how to organize their own Parliamentary government by studying both the successes and failures of our Constitution and of Westminster.
Where do we go from here?
Our system of government has been hacked and that has been possible because what seemed to be a feature in 1789 has turned out to be a bug in 2026. The long sojourn through English Parliamentary history above gives us options that we may have not considered before. All the while, the discussions of remedies starting with the Nixon Administration have focused on only the written constitutional options, namely Impeachment and the 25th Amendment (adopted in 1967).
There is strength in having a written Constitution but as I noted above that it is also a weakness, especially when it is interpreted “literally” as in “Original Intent”, something promulgated in the last few decades to a country that is already steeped in literal Bible Interpretation. In current thinking, change can only occur with supermajorities in all the critical choke points.
That is our fatal flaw. If we cannot evolve our self-governance except through almost impossible means, the whole thing falls apart. However, the history above gives us a way forward. In each case in that history, one party refused to move. The established order allowed them to do so. Where it was at an impossible impasse, as with Charles I, it ended with regicide, something we all want to avoid. However, his losing his head did set a precedent if only by brute force.
The Original Intent “doctrine” is just that, an idea by some lawyers said often enough and loud enough to sound like “settled” law. It is not. Never was. The Founders kept the Constitution sparse with only minimal detail of how things should work on purpose to give flexibility as the nation evolved. For example, it defined three branches of government but it left out some important stuff like the number of justices on the Supreme Court. In fact, all it really says is that there will be one and Congress will work out the details. There is also no mention of the Civil Service. That idea, fundamental to good, minimally corruption free government wasn’t even thought of until after the political corruption scandals went too far in the decades after the Civil War. The list goes on but the history above shows a pattern starting with King John — a document that the obstructing party signed given the alternative.
The Devil is in the Details
We already have a laundry list on the Kos as I mentioned in the beginning. What I propose is not policy detail but a process for how it gets done. My thinking for this essay started off in policy detail but it became clear that 10+ (more) points of policy is just one more turn on the merry go round. The devil very definitely in the details but first we need to understand where we are, where we want to go — basic navigation, but most important, how and why we want to get there.
checks and balances
People back then talked a lot about it but it is not actually in the Constitution. There are parts that imply checks etc. For example, the President has veto power and Congress, actually the House since it must initiate any bill involving money has the power of the purse. But again, it does not specify how. It was and is a nice slogan but it has no teeth. Let us first address Checks and Balances and then its sidekick Bipartisanship. Both of these are little more than dignified bits of prose to make us all sound democratic (in the small ‘d’ sense) but with little to no consequences.
How has the C&B bit worked out so far? Congress is a check on #47 — but only when Speaker Johnson doesn’t recess everybody out of town. The fatal flaw in all this is that checks are totally useless if there is no will to use them and without them, there can be no balance. The checks are also exclusively among the insiders of the “I got elected/appointed” club. The Senate is not going to stomp on #47s power grab because one day some Senator may run for POTUS and doesn’t want to preempt his own power grab. The only check Congress has on either the Executive or the Judiciary is impeachment. We have seen how that has worked out more than multiple times. It is the fire axe behind bullet proof glass. The only effective check is the electorate but that power, the only really effective power, only occurs on even numbered years. For President, the most powerful branch, make that every four years. More important, these people are all friends, drinking buddies. We see this constantly with the feckless behavior of both minority Leaders. They won’t go after the toxic derelection of duty by the majority because the members on the other side of the aisle are their “friends”. Polite but firmly stern letters suffice.
As for the elixir called Bipartisanship, this is a no longer even a meaningful phrase. There was a day when it meant something. Back in the day the Republicans had two wings, the socially liberal pro-business wing and the loony Libertarian and John Birch Anti-Communist wing. The Democrats had the urban “Liberal” wing and Dixiecrat bedsheet wearing wing. The Voting Rights Act finally passed because the business wing sided with the urban Liberal wing, hence, Bipartisan as lofty goal. Both parties were also accused of being “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” — and people were correct. No real difference other than the flavor of reprehensible. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” has long collected all the loonies and retrogrades into one place making bipartisanship little more than a comforting platitude.
The only real check comes at the ballot box
Elections are the only real check to power. Therefore, the closer we make the exercise of power to the consequences of an election, the greater the power of the check.
Balance? There never really was one. We are stuck with hierarchy simply because the cultural inertia in European culture is immense.4 Maybe, as climate change confines us all into the same environment that shaped the Native American culture, we might move to decision making in a “circle”. In the meantime, we work with what we have.
To make any checks on power work we need to make our decision makers know that they but a very near election away from being removed from office. That can only change when we change where the center of power resides.
The real center of power
This is obvious. The real center of power in the U.S. is an individual called he President, head of the Executive branch. We have simply assumed that since the very beginning. George Washington would have been a good king just like Solomon. But such apparently good things never last. #47, therefore, should not be a surprise. We only have to look at Donnie Jr., Eric, and Barron to where the trend line is headed. But is this inevitable? No.
There is also a fourth branch in the shadows that few talk about and it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution — because it did not exist in 1789. Actually, it did but it was called the East India Company, probably the first multinational corporation. When John Hancock and friends dumped all that tea into Boston Harbor, he was protesting the Walmart and Amazon of his day. Now that is not to say that he didn’t follow up with forming his own Starbucks once they were chucked out of town. The corporation as a power center did not arise in strength again until after the Civil War as industrialization, particularly the railroads formed and grew.
We do need to consider corporate power, especially now, as they think they have enough might to become blatant in their power grab, even naming their political philosophy, CEO Dictator. If we look at how corporations have evolved, they have followed the European feudal model of Petty Kingdoms. They are now moving into becoming empires. Anyone who has been employed in a corporation (the vast number of us) recognizes the traits enabled by their by-laws. The CEO is the King, especially in the case of Musk and Zuckerberg where they have changed the conventional by-laws to give their shares even more “votes”, i.e. their own Divine Right of Kings.
But the corporation’s strength and power only comes from law legislated by Congress. Without the protection of law, the whole thing falls apart; the immunity from legal consequences, regulation of how they are run, even its very existence. It exists and has its form only because Congress allowed it — in whole enabled it — and we allowed Congress to do it quietly while we were distracted somewhere else. There is a solution to this power threat and Sen Warren has been working on it.5 Corporate power since the 1870s and especially since Lewis Powell’s memo has evolved to be immortal and omnipotent, a god. But it is nothing more than a creation of law passed by Congress. See German Works Council which was a post-war reform of German corporate power mandated by the Marshall Plan, i.e. Gen. George Marshall, the American Secretary of State who set up the plan for the recovery of Europe and especially to de-Nazify Germany — no corporate power is neither ordained by God nor inevitable. Only Congress decides.6
It all comes down to Congress and what it is going to do about it. It can continue to acquiesce to the power grabs of ambitious men or it can, as an old friend would say, “Put the hammer down” and force corporate reform. Congress made this monster. There is no reason other than the lack of will why it cannot reform it. Sure, the court can intervene on any number of invented legal theories but the only legal theory that has any weight is one that gets passed into law — by the Congress.
One last point to those who would say, “If we reduce the Presidency to the role of a City Manager,7 we would not have had a Washington or an Obama. First, Washington viewed that job as similar to a city manager. And Obama would have been known as Speaker Obama, not President Obama. Ambition always gravitates to the center of power — and the most accountable center of power is the office of the Speaker (or Majority Leader) of the House of Representatives.
Make congress the primary branch
The problem here is right up front in “No Kings”. The Presidency is now the primary branch — of “official government” anyway — and if we throw in the Nixonian “Unitary Executive” theory, it is the only Almighty branch.
The goal is to make Congress, and explicitly the House, the primary center of power. We do this because this branch and the office of the majority leader, i.e. the Speaker is the most accountable officer in the government.8 The best example of wasted power is Rep Mike Johnson, a gelded hamster of a man, who illustrates the self limits of power. His job and the jobs of his hapless predecessors was/is at the pleasure of the majority. In the current climate of a House bent on grovelling at every opportunity, he is best for that job.
Placing the Speakership as the center of power combines the “serving at the pleasure of the majority” and the electability of that majority as the most powerful and most directly connected check on power. If the Speaker takes the place at the center, a few good things happen for democracy:
- Individual Representatives can no longer run as “independent”. That is not a virtue. Instead, a vote for the local rep is a vote for the Speaker. This is obvious in parliaments because the power of parties is understood and dealt with rather than wished away. Keep in mind that the only vote of any real worth in any new Congress is the vote for Speaker. Every other one is a detail.
- As noted above, the Speaker is both the most powerful and most vulnerable elected official because the job requires two votes. The party first must win a majority of seats. This is a much higher wall to climb for the few bad actors either in the running or in the shadows. The Speaker (and party) must win a majority vote in a majority of the districts. Second, and this is almost more important, the Speaker must convince the party membership that he and his leadership team can make winning happen. Members then elect the most capable, not the most pliable and ineffectual if for no other reason than self-preservation.
- This eliminates the current ability to spread and obscure the blame. Congress currently blames the President and the President blames the Congress. This is how we fell into the trap of “mid-term” elections. They have de-generated into an electorate’s verdict on the President which is little more than a protest vote where both branches can shift blame away. With the Speaker at the center, there is no place else to shift blame to. We only have to compare Mike Johnson to Liz Truss who holds the current record for the shortest stay in “No. 10”. Holiday tours are longer than her five week tenure. Her hapless successor lost the next election — badly. Both of them are now gone from politics. Mike Johnson, on the other hand, is just as bad or worse and he will probably still hold his seat in the next Congress.
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
Under these conditions things get done. Note that Nancy Pelosi was the most recent example of what the power of that position is and should be. Aside from policy details, she exhibited the talent for getting work done. She also demonstrated how things get done including stepping down when it was time.
We should also note that in order to get that job she had to prove herself over many terms to members of her party that she had the chops to do the job. Obama would have gone the same path if the Speakership was the top job. Her leadership team came up the same path she did. The committee chairpersons had to prove themselves over many years as members first.
The best counter example and warning is the current state of the #47 Presidency. The only constitutional requirement for the job is a minimum age (35). All he had to do was ride down an escalator and have a big mouth. The foolishness and lack of fitness for office of both him and his cabinet says it all. He and his clown car of fools would not have survived even in the GOP majority as it exists right now. Mike Johnson, believe it or not, is far more qualified — and that is a sad comment on our times.
So what would change? — And how?
Congress has all it needs. All it needs is for us to change our expectation of what they should do and how they do it. We have gotten what we have come to expect. Every politician I have ever talked to will admit the same thing. They know, starting with the first campaign day of their career, that they must never forget that their job depends on keeping their constituents, if not happy, satisfied that they are working for them. We forget our power in this.
At this point many might expect some 10 point plan, details of policy and law but that is not where we should be concentrating our effort. Note the reference above to Sen Warren’s plans for corporate reform. That is a detail. If we move the center of power back to the Congress — yes, back to the Congress — the pro-corporate shill’s opinion is just that, an opinion, not a law of physics.
- The Congress has the Power of the Purse. It is time to use it. If it does not like, actually their constituents hate, ICE they can simply not only de-fund ICE, but simply abolish DHS in its current form. After all, it created it in the first place. Congress, if it needs to micro-manage, it can do what is already going on, namely DHS does have a budget but it does not have authorization (the second step) to spend. They can simply fund a department or a portion of it on a month-to-month basis where the next month’s funding depends on reported accomplishment of goals in the previous month. The quote from Samuel Johnson above applies and has applied up until the last few feckless decades. Every part of the Executive would figure out really quickly that what the President wants is a “nice to have” but what Congress demands (the committee in charge of the purse) is a “must do”.
- The Congress has the power to define and regulate the Courts. There are nine Supreme Court justices because Congress made them. Congress cannot mess with their salaries but they can add as many as they like following the example of the UK House of Lords in 1911 where the House of Commons threatened to stuff the House of Lords with hand-picked peers who would vote to surrender the power of the veto for them. There are rumors that the King quietly advised the Lords to take the offer because the next step would be to abolish the hereditary Lords all together which the Commons eventually did this year when it eliminated the hereditary peerage. FDR did the same thing in 1937 when Congress had finally had enough of judicial obstruction of Depression Era reforms and relief. All the Congress has to do is reverse Citizens United and Dobbs and remind Roberts and friends that if they even think about making noise, court reform of many forms will be next on the menu, i.e. “Don’t make me come in there!”
- The Senate has the explicit power of Advice and Consent. What if both Houses worked out a process where the Advice part actually had consequences. What if the Senate, instead of acquiescing to the President out of courtesy (not in the Constitution), said, “Here are three choices for that post. Pick one.” There is nothing preventing the House taking part by working with the Senate to produce the list. If the President chooses to make a point of choosing someone else, like his kid’s ex-girlfriend, they simply say, “Nope. Pick from the list.” and there is nothing he can do. Implied in that threat is “or we will pick” by simply thinning the list to just one. So what if the court objects — Congress can simple explain the point above (again) and tell them that this is an issue just between the Congress and the Executive.
- There are a number of Constitutional functions that are only stated as existing with no indication of how they are to be performed. For example, Article II, Section 3 starts with “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient...” It does not specify how that is to be done. For a long time, this took the form of a letter delivered annually. The SOTU address is political theater hosted by the House (the Speaker extends the invitation because the door is locked otherwise). The staging is important. His delivering the address from the Speaker’s position (in the center) with the VP and actual Speaker sitting behind him says he is the most important person in the room. What if instead he delivered the address from the well while the Speaker presides from his/her chair above? What if the House also decided that the address/report is in two parts, the address as before followed by questions from the Representatives and Senators seated in the chamber? There is absolutely nothing preventing the House from mandating that procedure. It was the Commons a long time ago that handed the King the speech and said, “Read this.” The President, of course, could simply mail in his report to avoid the “optics” and especially the Q&A. I suspect doing so would send a stronger message of weakness than standing in the well to be questioned. The message and optics of the President standing in the well surrounded by all the seated members of the Congress would be clear. See above for the fate of Charles I. The same can apply to a veto. All Art I, Sect 7, Clause 2 says is, “but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated” and “If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law,” What if Congress in its own rules states that the response must be delivered to the Speaker (or Majority leader of the Senate) in person by the President. All the Speaker or Majority leader needs to do is be out of town for two weeks. Far fetched you say? Well, what law makes the ten days following mandatory in-office days or that slipping it under the door is sufficient? Look at the picture of King John above. He was not sitting down and signing because he wanted to either. Again, the optics can be clear in such extremes regardless of the provision of 2/3rds vote to override, especially when the bill curbs power that the wannabe King does not want to give up. Abuse of the Veto is in itself an abuse of power if the public perceives it as such. In such cases, make the veto as personally painful as possible. The opposition, pundits and the wise legal scholars will scold I am sure, but you can bet your lunch money from now until Musk lands on Mars that the opposition will take it and run with it when they come to power. How else to explain the endurance of the filibuster which is actually contrary to the Constitution’s requirement for a simple majority vote in the Senate.
There are mountains of other issues but these three make the point. It is not a series of issues or policies that can get buried in the weeds (the major intent of “Special Interests”). It is establishing who is really in charge. Do we have a king or kings as in case of the nine wannabe Infallible Popes masquerading as a Supreme Court or do we have a democracy where the majority of the People have the final say.9
And the final say is the sum of all this. The People have the final say. That is what the whole Declaration of Independence and Constitution was and is all about. The core of democracy is accountability. In a “circle” culture and society that is accomplished by everyone (including children, women already assumed) has a say and the decision is by consensus with full knowledge that their very survival is dependent on getting it right. In our larger society so accustomed to the “pyramid”, it is short path of accountability by those put in charge at the top to the majority “below” them.
When I worked in engineering management and as a Senior/Principal Engineer during my “high tech” days I came to the realization that org charts were written upside down. The org chart on my office wall had me at the bottom and the interns at the top. My real job was supporting my direct reports and their direct reports so they could do their job. That fits, as I later learned from my Native friend is exactly how a “chief” works in the clan. His job is to make sure that everyone he is responsible for gets fed. That often meant that he may not get his lawn mower back for a very long time, if ever because someone else in the clan needed it…
In the end, the most accountable branch of government is the legislature. Congress is the closest we have to the wisdom of a “circle”. In the Federal case that is Congress. The Speaker serves at the pleasure of the House majority and, most important, the House majority only remains so if their constituents want them to stay there.
epilogue — or final points
Sure, there is a huge agenda of policy items that I have only alluded to. Repudiating Citizens United and Dobbs, regulating corporate power, ending endless wars. I would like the abolishment of the Electoral College, rank choice voting, and politically independent re-districting too. That will happen — but only after we fix the fundamentals.
The power of the People is paramount in all these discussions. Those who are invested in maintaining the status quo and the momentum they have built into the process will come up with any and all legal sounding rubbish masquerading as wise expert legal opinion to protect the trajectory of what they have carefully planned. They will throw about things like “unconstitutional” or “inevitable” or its inverse “impossible”. Sen Warren is a woman after all. The fact remains that the Consent of the Governed is a red line that only a fool would attempt to cross. We had a “No Kings” protest on Saturday (28 Feb 2026) which, by all accounts, was bigger than the last one. Ignoring that red line has consequences. Governments fall when that line is crossed. Orban in Hungary is flirting with crossing it in spite of the lesson of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2014 just across the border. Charles I paid with his head. Assad is now stuck in an apartment in Moscow. MAGA is starting to find out. Putin is in his bunker.
So back to the question whether any of this is possible. When the Constitution has been hacked and the high barrier of Impeachment or the even higher barrier of the 25th (2/3 of both Houses + majority of the Cabinet) is invoked to impede reform, the Social Contract is broken, we are in most dangerous territory. I personally do not want to go there. I served in Viet Nam and am all too familiar with violence and chaos. Both parties in each of of the conflicts I have cited from English history also knew all too well, the trial and execution of Charles I being the prime example. That is why every monarch after him accepted the “far fetched” if that prevented breakdown at their expense. It is beyond significant that Prince Andrew has been bumped to Andy Windsor.
Either the Congress, especially the House, stops writing “stern letters” and takes action with real consequences or, after the hostile takeover by the “CEO Dictator”, the Power of the People secures kinetic consequences. The red light is flashing and the warning horn is loud.
Sometimes the best parts of the picture are colored outside the lines.
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[1] Mark 15:2 from The Jerusalem Bible. Mark is the earliest Gospel, around 60-70 CE. John is 30-50 years later. Mark has fewer embellishments than Matthew or Luke which expanded the story in Mark.
[2] See 1 Samuel 8. The whole chapter expresses this ambivalence. Subsequent chapters and the books 1 and 2 Kings continue the whole sordid history where monarchies without constraints all ended in decline and failure. If you have a problem with religious “doctrine”, read it as history (which it is) where God/YHWH/Adoni/אדֹנִי is the narrator or chorus. It is a cautionary tale that seems to need repeating on a regular schedule.
[3] Another source expanding the Native American cultural circle is “The Dawn of Everything”, David Graeber and David Wengrow, ISBN 978-0-374-15735-7. See Ch 11 “Full Circle” (after reading 1-10) for a summary of tne influence of the Wendat people on French Enlightenment and concurrent with it the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) influence on the English/American Enlightenment.
[4] Newton’s first law: “A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by a force.” The bigger the rock, the harder the push…
[5] Note that this is pushback from corporate power itself, framing the Senator’s proposals as “unworkable”, “failed old Progressive ideas”. “inevitably a failure”. To be clear, the Constitution says nothing at all about corporations. In fact, the Founding Fathers and the following generation were somewhat hostile to corporations. Everything the author cites as “inevitable” and some kind of law of physics is but smoke and mirrors.
[6] “But SCOTUS will declare it unconstitutional!” Only if Congress lets it go by. Marbury v. Madison set a precedent (and right) based on Constitutional ambiguity but Congress defines the court. Congress just let it go in 1803 — no harm, no foul — but that is no longer. Striking down as unconstitutional is “repeal” a function assigned to elected legislatures, not appointed courts. Courts can “review” but the Constitution says nothing more, including what it means. Congress has the power to define exactly what “review” means… It is an irony that Chief Justice Roberts, back in the day when he was a DOJ attorney working in the Reagan administration, was arguing exactly that point to Congress to bar the Warren court from invalidating state level Jim Crow laws.
[7] If you look at the reference for City Manager you will see that it was a reform of municipal governance to curtail the power and corruption of mayors, e.g. the Mayor of New York City (or Chicago).
[8] The Speakership of the House is its only elected office in both our Congress and Westminster type Parliaments. In the English Parliament it evolved to be the role of managing the debate, his/her job is to “recognize” members to manage who speaks and for how long, in essence, an elected referee/umpire. They are also the person who is addressed by a member when speaking which prevents the debate from descending into personal shouting matches and fist-fights. The American House has a Speaker-Pro Tem (for the moment) for this role. The Parliamentary “Prime Minister” comes from the Cabinet of “MInisters” who advise the King. We did not have ministers as such so the office evolved to the majority leader. Remember the Founders had a thing about parties...
[9] This is not a hit on the modern Catholic Church. This is a useful and understood metaphor. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility only originates from the First Vatican Council of 1870 at a time when the power of European monarchies was in serious disrepute and decline. It was a failed reactionary attempt to address the (then) contemporary issues that were threatening the old order. All but the (shrinking) most traditionally conservative church prefer to not talk about it, wishing it would go away. So far, Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago bred White Sox fan, has taken that doctrine, originally applied to just the Pope via the Curia, and applied it to the Church as a whole, not too much different than the Power of the People.
