My career was in the legislative branch at the state level. So I'm biased toward that body. I wish Congress was more of a legislating body.
This isn't my observation, but Congress has relinquished power to the president in part because it is safer to let presidents solve problems with executive orders and rules. That is, if a legislator authors a bill that is supported 70-30 in the district, that means 30% of people are potentially angry with the legislator. Keep authoring 70% victories and pretty soon a lot of 30% opposition adds up in increments to defeat at the next election.
But if you ask the president to issue an order, the legislator can quietly tell people from the 70 side that he (or she, calm the ef down before you cancel me) was the guy that told the president to solve the problem. And he won't mention that issue when speaking to the 30 side.
That makes sense. Although it bizarrely makes such a process reliant on having a president of your own party, because the president presumably wouldn't be eager to help the opposition members that way. Which makes it a quasi-parliamentary system, in a way, no?
My
question is why does the president go along with that? Shouldn't the
president be happy to refuse all requests and let Congress take the
public relations hits instead of him for making decisions and angering some motivated minority that opposes the action? And that's apart from a president's possible philosophical commitment to restraining the size of the executive bloat--I've given up that dream for the most part.
And sure, you can say that the president doesn't want to harm their own party's members by making them legislate. But wouldn't it be better to force Congress as an institution to make hard decisions and keep them busy legislating rather than politicking?
Maybe Congress would have less time for political exercises masquerading as Congressional oversight or solemn impeachment.
Maybe members of Congress would have less time for auditioning for their post-Congress media gig by building an audience of Twitter fanatics.
Mind you, just because I think that Congress should be a legislating body rather than a body that lobbies the president to take action that I think it should pass legislation for every problem. I dislike the periodic measures of Congressional effectiveness that focuses on how many bills are passed.
Anyway, that came to mind. For what it's worth.
