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Does America Need a President?
The New York Times ^ | July 5, 2024 | Ross Douthat

Posted on 07/06/2024 9:44:24 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican

As the belief that Joe Biden is fully equipped to be president dissolves like mist on a Delaware morning, some of his defenders have fallen back on the idea that the American presidency is not really a man but a team.

“I would take Joe Biden on his worst day at age 86 — so long as he has people around him like Avril Haines, Samantha Power, Gina Raimondo supporting him — over Donald Trump any day,” a former homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said on MSNBC a few days ago. Don’t think of this as the Biden presidency, in other words; think of it as the Biden-Raimondo-Haines-Power presidency (tack on a dozen more names if you like), in which if the central pillar weakens, the support structure can still hold things up.

From there, you could take the relatively mild position that one lesson of both the Biden years and Trump’s first term is that the executive branch can often work around a president who isn’t quite up to the demands of the job. Or you could take the sweeping position that the government as a corporate entity almost always works independently of the occupant of the Oval Office and so an increasingly incapacitated chief executive who does what the process tells him to do would just be business as usual for the ship of state.

The mild position clearly has some truth to it: The everyday functioning of the executive branch does seem more independent of the president’s capacities than it appeared to be before January 2017. I also think the sweeping argument gets at an important reality of governmental power: Conservatives especially have long understood the limited ability of presidents to fully impose their authority on the bureaucracy they nominally lead.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Political Humor/Cartoons; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: avrilhaines; babylontimes; biden; cnbc; deepstate; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; fakenews; ginaraimondo; jehjohnson; mediawingofthednc; msdnc; mslsd; msnbc; nbc; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkslimes; newyorktimes; nobrainscollectively; obama; obamalegacy; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; pmsnbc; presidency; president; presstitutes; ronklain; rossdouthat; samanthapower; smearmachine; tds
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To: DIRTYSECRET

I see what you did there.

“18 American Presidents Didn’t Have a Vice President For All or Part of Their Terms”

https://forgottenhistoryblog.com/18-american-presidents-didnt-have-a-vice-president-for-all-or-some-of-their-terms/


61 posted on 07/06/2024 3:34:02 PM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult (“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” - Possibly Mark Twain.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

The logic of the farce has forced them into the absurd conclusion of their absurd farce.


62 posted on 07/06/2024 4:19:44 PM PDT by nicollo (Remember when we had to close tags?)
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To: jdege
In L. Neil Smith’s North American Confederacy alt-history novels, None of the Above wins the presidency in 1968, 2000, and 2004, then wins President-for-Life in 2008.

Remembering who came before, President and Prophet Nehemiah Scudder.

"If This Goes On—" is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction and revised and expanded to novel length for inclusion in the 1953 collection Revolt in 2100.

The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian "Prophets." The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).


63 posted on 07/06/2024 5:09:02 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken! )
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To: doc maverick
Who are the individuals calling the shots in foreign policy and WHO dissolved our borders?

Likely our creditors.

64 posted on 07/06/2024 5:17:18 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

I’m mean, what’s the point, right?
Let’s just have unelected bureaucrats running things in the shadows. It’s for our own good Comrades! Forward!


65 posted on 07/06/2024 6:42:22 PM PDT by vpintheak (Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. )
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To: MinorityRepublican

🤢🤮


66 posted on 07/06/2024 7:12:21 PM PDT by Axenolith (Here... Hold my beer and check this out...)
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To: MinorityRepublican
"'I would take Joe Biden on his worst day at age 86 — so long as he has people around him like Avril Haines, Samantha Power, Gina Raimondo supporting him — over Donald Trump any day,' a former homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said on MSNBC a few days ago. "

A domestic Axis of Evil.
67 posted on 07/06/2024 7:40:47 PM PDT by clearcarbon (Fraudulent elections have consequences.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

President or Politburo? Hmmm... Tough decision./s Besides the fact that we have this little thing called The Constitution, we’ve already experienced a de facto government by politburo, and it sucks. It’s called the Biden Administration. It’s also dangerous.

In truth, the executive branch, to some degree, has been run by committee for years. Bill Clinton even referred to it. Trump tried to wrest control away from the cabal in his first term and we already know what happened. But they underestimated him, so we find ourselves where we are today.


68 posted on 07/06/2024 8:09:38 PM PDT by mbrfl
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To: mbrfl
we’ve already experienced a de facto government by politburo, and it sucks. It’s called the Biden Administration. It’s also dangerous.

The Soviets experienced that kind of government from 1953 - 1991.

Four years of American government by politburo led to stagnation. Another four years, our economy will continue to pursuit peronist policies sort of like Argentina.

Don't forget, 100 years ago, Argentina was a first world nation.

69 posted on 07/06/2024 8:15:18 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: SunkenCiv

Douthat has been positioned for 15 years by the NYT as a conservative Catholic (opposition) voice. I don’t read much that he writes, probably because it rarely has surprising or memorable elements, at least to my way of thinking. He may well be authentically both conservative and Catholic; he is also the product of a country day school in Connecticut and Harvard (Phi Beta Kappa, to his credit), and a descendant of a governor of Connecticut (not that there’s anything wrong with that). No doubt it’s hard to break away from the (Uniparty) establishment.


70 posted on 07/06/2024 8:58:22 PM PDT by aposiopetic
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To: 17th Miss Regt

LOL You sir are a cockeyed optimist!


71 posted on 07/06/2024 9:08:57 PM PDT by Segovia
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To: Hillarys Gate Cult

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” but the Clintons are a freakin limerick all by themselves.


72 posted on 07/06/2024 9:11:17 PM PDT by Segovia
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To: MinorityRepublican

think of it as the Biden-Raimondo-Haines-Power presidency (tack on a dozen more names if you like)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

FREad in “Obama’s Third Term.”

What a collective of whackos.

Read the Constitution. America requires a president.

IT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT A “TEAM.”


73 posted on 07/06/2024 10:15:52 PM PDT by Candor7 (Ask not for whom the Trump Trolls,He trolls for thee!),<img src="" width=500</img><a href="">tag</a>)
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To: aposiopetic

Yeah, NY Times conservative, good one. Just stop.


74 posted on 07/07/2024 12:17:11 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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