"The 18th Century office" - Josh Marshall, TPM - about the presidency - very relevant

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-18th-century-office

"We are going to learn so many things in the next four years, or however long the Trump presidency lasts. The question is how painful the education will be. One thing we are now in the process of learning, at a new level, is the 18th century nature of the American presidency.

It is not unique but it is a profound outlier in modern democratic states.

In the vast majority of contemporary democratic states, there is a statutory presidency but it has limited or merely symbolic powers. In others there is a figurehead monarch who plays a comparable role. Italy, The United Kingdom, Spain, Israel, Greece, The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, Canada, Australia, India, the list goes on and on. In none of these countries does the head of government hold power in their own right or own person. They hold power because of parliamentary majorities. In practice they can hold a firm grip on power. But at any time, if things get really weird, they can be removed from office. (France is the major exception to this pattern among major power global powers which are considered democracies.)

The US President is both head of state and head of government. There are many reasons for this. Obviously the office has evolved profoundly over two-plus centuries. But the key reason is that this how the constitution writers conceived of effective executive power. The US constitution was written in reaction to the period of drift and perceived weakness that characterized the Articles of Confederation. Those had been written in reaction to the perceived tyranny of George III. When the constitution writers went back to it in 1787 it was the British monarch that they had in mind as a key reference point.

They weren't monarchists. They didn't want and wouldn't accept a king. So they fashioned what amounted to a Republican king, the US presidency. The US President isn't a creature of the legislature. He or she stands entirely apart from it. There are some failsafes. A President can be impeached and removed from office. Unlike what we saw in the 1990s, impeachment isn't really there to deal with statutory crimes. It is a mechanism that avoids the necessity of a coup or assassination if large majorities of the Congress think the President has lost the legitimacy to hold the office."

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much more - very worthwhile read