What if we had two presidents

He served our the remaining term and won re-election. Although opposed the secession, he continued to defend the rights of the southern states. Davis served in the Senate until January when Mississippi left the Union.

He led the southern states during the four years of the Civil War. His hope was that public opinion would support the independence of the Confederacy without having to defeat the Union. This strategy almost worked for the first two years of the war, until the South could not sustain the loses they were suffering in battle. Once they began to lose major battles, foreign countries were reluctant to lend support, especially due to the slavery issue.

Upon the surrender of General Robert E. He was captured by Union troops near Irwinville, George and charged with treason. He was imprisoned at Fort Monroe, Virginia until May 13, when he was released on bail, paid by abolitionist Horace Greeley.

Davis was never tried on the charge of treason. Davis was elected to the Senate from Mississippi for the third time but was unable to take his seat as he lost his citizenship, which was not restored until by special legislation, ninety years after his death.

Jefferson Davis lived out his last years at an estate called Beauvoir, Mississippi. He died on December 8, of acute bronchitis in New Orleans, Louisiana. His body is in a specially constructed memorial at Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond, Virginia. What do you think the attitude of the citizens and soldiers were in the north and the south — and why?

Which president finds it in his in-box? It is also this: Outside of the agencies themselves, the people most likely to care about these innumerable decisions, to understand and closely follow what the federal government does day to day, are leaders and members of interest groups that are often party-aligned, providing the party with activists and lobbying its elected officials.

Far from honoring a scheme of divided responsibilities, they would pressure their respective co-presidents on literally every question that came up. This would make agreement very difficult, even for two presidents who, left to themselves, might happily settle most questions over a spirited round of golf.

A good party-based system mediates between the people and the government, fostering inclusion and accountability. The executive in such systems is an extension of the legislature and depends on a legislative majority in order to function. This means that the two elective branches, which must cooperate for most things to happen, will often be under the control of opposed parties. And since there are only two significant parties, thanks to the overhang of other eighteenth-century forms, that opposition will be diametrical.

In effect, America often has not one but two governments of the day, and its system is all but intended to set them working at cross-purposes. It is more likely than not, therefore, that modern presidents will face a hostile Congress for much, most, or sometimes all of their terms in office.

That, in fact, is the situation as I write this. It involves each party correctly noting that it won the most recent election for its branch , and therefore claiming that it represents the current wishes of the American people.

Voters are invited, in the fine old tradition, to cast angry votes against the do-nothing bum — thus perversely empowering the saboteurs, and ensuring that the bum can do even less.

He explains why he thinks a dual presidency would solve it, not simply write the current gridlock into the Constitution. His is a comparatively simple change, he argues, since the rest of the constitutional design would be left undisturbed. This would tie the choice of executive more closely to the choice of a legislative majority, producing a more or less cohesive government whose unsabotaged achievements, then, voters could review and either approve or reject.

Yet that same wisdom deserts Americans when they consider their own system. Precisely because of its archaic mystique, the Constitution is treated as holy writ. It is not a jumble of political compromises, patched up through guesswork in a snuff-filled room of yesteryear — a system with a mixed record of partial success and occasional huge failure, long overdue for rethinking in light of the actual needs of modern nations and the historical experiences of Western governments over the past two and a quarter centuries.

No, but it could help guarantee some lawmaking. At any rate, the bias toward inertia is a weakness. Yet this is the feature that Orentlicher seeks not just to preserve but to intensify, even while transforming the system more drastically than Americans have contemplated since the s.

Orentlicher would have America break from it permanently, something no other modern Western nation has done, while nonetheless clinging to a political theory from the eighteenth century. It does, although not in the way he intends. The U. This text is under a Creative Commons license : Attribution-Noncommercial 2. Site map — Contact us — Website credits — Syndication.

Privacy Policy — About Cookies. Skip to navigation — Site map. A successful negotiated end to the war would not have saved his presidency, but it might have helped redeem his legacy.

But Nixon worried that would help elect his rival, Democrat Hubert Humphrey. As Farrell explains, Nixon—a former vice president, senator, and U. Anna Chennault, a Republican fundraiser, had close ties across Asia through her lobbying on behalf of nationalist China.

Perhaps it helped contribute to his victory in the presidential race, too, which he won by less than a percentage point in the popular vote. Whatever the benefit to Nixon, the costs of not ending the war are clear: More than 21, Americans were killed in Vietnam between the end of and the American withdrawal.

The effect of this strange maneuvering was that for a time, foreign leaders were negotiating with two different American heads of state, one elected and one not yet in office, a situation that is now being repeated with Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

An objection must be declared in writing and signed by at least one Representative and one Senator. In the case of an objection, the Joint Session recesses and each chamber considers the objection separately for no more than two hours; each Member may speak for five minutes or less.

After each house votes on whether to accept the objection, the Joint Session reconvenes and both chambers disclose their decisions. If both chambers agree to the objection, the electoral votes in question are not counted.

If either chamber opposes the objection, the votes are counted. Originally, the Electoral College provided the Constitutional Convention with a compromise between two main proposals: the popular election of the President and the election of the President by Congress. There have been other attempts to change the system, particularly after cases in which a candidate wins the popular vote, but loses in the Electoral College.

The closest Congress has come to amending the Electoral College since was during the 91st Congress — when the House passed H. The resolution cleared the House to 70, but failed to pass the Senate.

The election of the President goes to the House of Representatives. Each state delegation casts a single vote for one of the top three contenders from the initial election to determine a winner.