What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[DGuller]

Any Americans here wishing you had a parliamentary system, rather than a presidential one?

I've been thinking that for a while.  Depending on how it's set up, the system would more explicitly reflect the various camps that exist in our politics, and there would be more competitive pressure to keep parties more sane and less sclerotic.

[Norgy]

JPMorgan raises recession probability to 60%.

Those are some damn fine crystal balls.

Crystal balls of light.

[Threviel]

Would having a parliamentary system make a difference if a major party was corrupt and hell bent on stupidity?

In a parliamentary system of non-Westminster style Trump would lead a party probably winning plurality and perhaps negotiating a majority rule together with some similar parties. A Berlusconi if you will. Or a Hitler. The Weimar republic was exceedingly well built, with checks and balances and very democratic representation. On paper. It hade very little legitimacy and that made it vulnerable to a take-over.

I don't necessarily think the type of rule matters very much when it comes to this shit. If some demagogue can undermine the legitimacy of the political system in a sufficient part of the electorate that political system is dead.

[viper37]

Would having a parliamentary system make a difference if a major party was corrupt and hell bent on stupidity?

I don't know about the UK, but in Canada, once a party has the majority, they can't be removed from power.

If they pull shit like Trump, ignoring the courts & all, the GG has no real power to remove them, it's all theoritical.

The GG could invoke the army to remove a government from office, I suppose.  But it would have to be a series of catastrophic events to reach that point.  More than ignoring Federal court orders, more than blatant corruption, more than breaching freedom of the press conventions, more than disregarding freedom of speech, more than tanking the economy, etc.

All I could see really, is if a Prime Minister was openly colluding with an enemy of Canada after having replaced most of the senior heads of the RCMP and CSIS to insure no investigation would be made, then ignoring court orders to stop what he was doing, then maybe the GG would step in if his party was still following him.

But if he did something truly evil, like say, letting a French speaking province talk of separation without calling them out on it, then sure, he would be dismissed immediately by his followers.

[crazy canuck]

Would having a parliamentary system make a difference if a major party was corrupt and hell bent on stupidity?

I don't know about the UK, but in Canada, once a party has the majority, they can't be removed from power.

If they pull shit like Trump, ignoring the courts & all, the GG has no real power to remove them, it's all theoritical.

The GG could invoke the army to remove a government from office, I suppose.  But it would have to be a series of catastrophic events to reach that point.  More than ignoring Federal court orders, more than blatant corruption, more than breaching freedom of the press conventions, more than disregarding freedom of speech, more than tanking the economy, etc.

All I could see really, is if a Prime Minister was openly colluding with an enemy of Canada after having replaced most of the senior heads of the RCMP and CSIS to insure no investigation would be made, then ignoring court orders to stop what he was doing, then maybe the GG would step in if his party was still following him.

But if he did something truly evil, like say, letting a French speaking province talk of separation without calling them out on it, then sure, he would be dismissed immediately by his followers.

But as we discussed during Trump's first term, it would be very difficult for someone like Trump to take over a party in our parliamentary system.

I don't really wanna go through all of the arguments again, but suffice to say that a Prime Minister that is going off the rails is much easier to remove than a president.

[Threviel]

It wouldn't be that difficult in a few countries. Most notably a whack job came to power in Labour in the UK. Any party where there's enough direct democracy in leader selection is susceptible to this shit.

And that's without discussing a Berlusconi style wholesale creation of a new party. There's nothing stopping a popular enough demagogue from creating a whole new party and using that to win elections.

[crazy canuck]

And yet Liz Truss lasted for a shorter period then a head of lettuce when she created less economic harm.

[Syt]

Was the weather too shitty for golfing?

[HVC]

Trump and truss are not analogous. She lost the support of the people and her party quickly. Their only similarities are they're both stupid and don't know how the economy works (or how a lot of things work). The American system has procedures in place to curtail bad actors. You can impeach an incompetent president, the judiciary is supposed to stop bad laws and actions, and closer to the matter of the day congress is supposed to control trade. There are other "checks and balances" in place, but those rely on both parties acting in good faith and the people demanding action. But now you have a rotten and thoroughly corrupt GOP at the helm. They're in turn simpering to or colluding with trump. And worse they have the popular support to prop them up. The American system isn't broken, it's the American people.

In a scenario where a British trump ( Sir Bartholomew Ignasius Trump?) held power over a similarly corrupt and colluding Tory party whose support amongst the populace matched real world trump would a parliamentary system have the means of stopping Sir Trump? I ask because I don't know. Maybe there is, in which case good for parliamentary systems.

[mongers]

... snip ....

Was the weather too shitty for golfing?

Give him credit, his productivity is off the scale, US GDBS is reaching new heights. 

[Sheilbh]

I think HVC is basically right.

But I would quibble, the US system is suppose to have a far stronger legislature - and the legislature has broken down for many years now. They should be controlling trade power, they should be controlling the administrative state and having a far more decisive say in foreign policy. All of those areas have increasingly been ceded to the executive for many decades - but even if you go back to the 90s Senators and the Senate mattered. But at a certain point when a system isn't functioning as intended as these sort of results, I don't think can just blame the American people but should ask if that system is dysfunctional and why. And if a political system only operates under certain conditions of republican virtues - perhaps that's a problem.

I think the virtue of a parliamentary system is that the executive is not totally divorced from the legislature. It is either part of or directly accountable to it. So the practical politics of both law making and executive power are in the same place, but separated from the symbolic/representing the state stuff which is in the hands of a constitutional monarch or a constrained president (I think this is particularly relevant with the military). It doesn't establish power and symbolic resonance in an independent executive.

I think the other two upsides in my view of a parliamentary system are that it creates a role for an "opposition" - it encodes oppositional politics as an important part of democratic politics as opponents not enemies. I think the combination of all the symbolism of the state and executive power can make that more challenging. But also it introduces the healthy competitive element of democratic politics to the executive. A president has a fixed term which they will serve and can only be removed in a specific set of circumstances (crimes and misdemeanours etc - which lead to sophistic debates). A PM can be removed because they're not up the job, because they're not popular and might lose the next election. The people sat around the cabinet table are also sharp-elbowed ambitious sociopaths who all think they'd make a fantastic PM. The people who often decide whether or not a leader survives are the people who depend on them helping the party win elections. A PM is not insulated from lean and hungry types. I think a parliamentary system generally goes with the grain of democratic politics more (opposition, argument, contestation of power, ambition) and requires less virtue to function.

In a way I think the better example where you might make a case for a parliamentary system in the US is not Trump, but Biden.

Edit: And I should say I don't think any system or constitutional arrangement is protection - it's all downstream of legitimacy and political culture.

[Bauer]

I saw this economist speak awhile back on this tariff analysis of washing machines.  In short the tariffs did create some low paying jobs for the US but at a cost of about 800k per job.

I think the future holds a lot more of this but Trump will claim all those jobs as wins.

https://www.northerntrust.com/asia-pac/insights-research/2025/weekly-economic-commentary/tariffs-a-case-study

[Zanza]

The five trillion investment he claims were obviously not into publicly traded companies.

[Gups]

Trump and truss are not analogous. She lost the support of the people and her party quickly. Their only similarities are they're both stupid and don't know how the economy works (or how a lot of things work). The American system has procedures in place to curtail bad actors. You can impeach an incompetent president, the judiciary is supposed to stop bad laws and actions, and closer to the matter of the day congress is supposed to control trade. There are other "checks and balances" in place, but those rely on both parties acting in good faith and the people demanding action. But now you have a rotten and thoroughly corrupt GOP at the helm. They're in turn simpering to or colluding with trump. And worse they have the popular support to prop them up. The American system isn't broken, it's the American people.

In a scenario where a British trump ( Sir Bartholomew Ignasius Trump?) held power over a similarly corrupt and colluding Tory party whose support amongst the populace matched real world trump would a parliamentary system have the means of stopping Sir Trump? I ask because I don't know. Maybe there is, in which case good for parliamentary systems.

It's not comparable because Brits are much less partisan than Americans and we have a multi-party system. No British PM has had a 40% base they can rely on. 20% at best

[viper37]

Would having a parliamentary system make a difference if a major party was corrupt and hell bent on stupidity?

I don't know about the UK, but in Canada, once a party has the majority, they can't be removed from power.

If they pull shit like Trump, ignoring the courts & all, the GG has no real power to remove them, it's all theoritical.

The GG could invoke the army to remove a government from office, I suppose.  But it would have to be a series of catastrophic events to reach that point.  More than ignoring Federal court orders, more than blatant corruption, more than breaching freedom of the press conventions, more than disregarding freedom of speech, more than tanking the economy, etc.

All I could see really, is if a Prime Minister was openly colluding with an enemy of Canada after having replaced most of the senior heads of the RCMP and CSIS to insure no investigation would be made, then ignoring court orders to stop what he was doing, then maybe the GG would step in if his party was still following him.

But if he did something truly evil, like say, letting a French speaking province talk of separation without calling them out on it, then sure, he would be dismissed immediately by his followers.

But as we discussed during Trump's first term, it would be very difficult for someone like Trump to take over a party in our parliamentary system.

I don't really wanna go through all of the arguments again, but suffice to say that a Prime Minister that is going off the rails is much easier to remove than a president.

Pierre Poilièvre.  Maxime Bernier.  Éric Duhaime (>10% in the last provincial election).  Danielle Smith.  Preston Manning.  Pierre-Elliot Trudeau sending the army in Quebec to arrest the citizens affiliated to a political party he disagreed with.  While his supporters and his entire party cheered on.*

These all right wing agitator who have a certain popular support.  Poilièvre almost made it to Prime Minister of the country because the Libs were governed by an idiot.

The left can't do something like that for now because they are always fighting one another.  In Quebec, they had a charismatic leader.  He inspired, promoted and always refused to condemn violence when it happened, but that wasn't enough for the most radical in his party.  Now he's gone and the party keep backstabbing one another.

It's only a matter of time until someone more radical takes his place and unites the party.  The current leader is much more radical than he was, but she lacks the charisma.

A lot of people don't believe Poilièvre is a radical who attracts the same crowd as MAGA and will restrict abortion rights once elected.  They don't believe he will fuck our economy for good with his stupid half baked plans.


*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act#The_October_Crisis

The use of the Act to address the problem presented by the FLQ was well supported by Canadians in all regions of Canada, according to a December Gallup Poll.^[28] However, there were many vocal critics of the government action, including New Democratic Party leader Tommy Douglas, who said, "The government, I submit, is using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut."^[29]
While the Act was in force, 465 people were arrested and held without charge but were eventually released.^[29]
The response by the federal and provincial governments to the incident still sparks controversy. There was a large amount of concern about the act being used, as it was a considered to be a direct threat to civil liberties, removing rights such as habeas corpus from all Canadians. This is the only time that the Act had been put in place during peacetime in Canada.

Critics, such as Laurier LaPierre, accused Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's move to suspend habeas corpus as more of a reaction to the separatist movement in Quebec by criminalizing it.^[30]

The Act's 1970 regulations were replaced by the Public Order (Temporary Measures) Act in November 1970, which subsequently expired on 30 April 1971.^[31]

In October 2020, Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet asked PM Justin Trudeau to apologize for the Canadian Government's invocation of the Act.^[32]