American Political System: Difference between revisions
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There is a feeling among some Americans that there may be a reality distortion field of some sort that follows the outer edge of the Capital Beltway (a highway that circles DC). Attempts to prove this fail to obtain federal funding.
== Republic vs. Democracy ==
Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy." This may or may not be true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person doing the claiming what he means before nodding sagely. The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (after the fashion of, say, [[Ancient Greece|ancient Athens]]) was a generally bad idea; for example, [[Thomas Jefferson]] claimed "''A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.''" More colloquially, "Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner."▼
▲Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy." This may or may not be true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person doing the claiming what he means before nodding sagely. The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (after the fashion of, say, [[Ancient Greece|ancient Athens]]) was a generally bad idea; for example, [[Thomas Jefferson]] claimed
When people of other nations are trying to understand the rather odd political behavior of the USA, they would do well to remember that the United States is literally just that: fifty individual states, each with their own constitution, all under the aegis of a central federal government. The relationship between the federal government and the state governments can get contentious, to the point that there [[The American Civil War|was a civil war about it]].▼
== The Fifty States ==
[[File:Map of USA with state and territory names 2.png|thumb|A political map of the United States of America and territories. Every state is its own government, and can operate quite differently from other states.]]
▲When people of other nations are trying to understand the rather odd political behavior of the USA, they would do well to remember that the United States is literally just that: fifty individual states, each with their own constitution, all under the aegis of a central federal government. The relationship between the federal government and the state governments can get contentious, to the point that there [[The American Civil War|was a civil war about it]]. For that matter the relationship between state governments themselves can be contentious.<ref>A bit of trivia: In the early days small wars have been fought over bits of territory in dispute, such as the Toledo War between Ohio and Michigan (Then a territory government).</ref>
== The Constitution ==
[[File:Constitution of the United States, page 1.jpg|thumb|Page one of the American Constitution. The preamble beginning with the words "We The People" is iconic and may often appear in media with a political theme... or be read by [[William Shatner|a Canadian actor]] in [[Star Trek: The Original Series/Recap/S2/E23 The Omega Glory|a really crappy ''Star Trek'' episode]], so take that with a grain of salt.]]
Unlike many other nations, the US has had precisely one written constitution since independence in 1776,<ref>The [[The American Revolution|Articles]] [[Old Shame|of Confederation]] were a wash and don't count</ref> which is referred to simply as "the Constitution". This makes it the second-oldest written national constitution still in effect,<ref>The oldest is the constitution of [[San Marino]], which went into effect in 1600</ref> and the third-oldest still in effect overall.<ref>The Constitution of Massachusetts, drafted by [[John Adams]], [[Samuel Adams]], and James Bowdoin, went into effect in 1780 and had significant influence on the federal one.</ref> The Constitution defines itself as "the supreme law of the land", and all other statutes and acts of government must defer to it or be rendered null and void. The thesis of the thing is that all people are guaranteed certain inalienable rights by virtue of their being, that government exists for the purpose of safeguarding those rights, and that Americans have the right and responsibility, if their representatives fail to do so, to kick them directly in the seat of their pants and replace them with people who will. A beautiful thing.
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== The Executive Branch ==
[[File:White House Washington.JPG|thumb|The White House, the residence of the President of the United States of America and an iconic landmark of the United States of America. This shows up in media a lot, and is visual shorthand for representing the American government. A patriotic American character in fiction might call an operator on the telephone and demand the operator "Get me the White House!" to share whatever key information they learned.]]
The executive branch of government consists of the President, Vice President, and the Cabinet.
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* Natural born citizen (read: US citizen by birth, rather than by naturalization) OR citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted. The latter was necessary because at the time of the Constitution's adoption, the United States had only existed for 7 years, meaning that the election of 1812 was the first in which it was mathematically possible for a natural born citizen to meet the 35 years of age requirement, and going for more than 20 years without a President was obviously not an option.
Note the requirement is technically a little more flexible than "only native-born", but unless you were alive in September 1787 ''and'' living between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, it's pretty much limited to the native born. Either way, the late John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone)
The only two Presidents that have actually been challenged in any way under the terms of eligibility to date are Barack Obama and Chester A. Arthur. Challengers to Obama claim that he was actually born in Kenya, and that his Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements were forgeries, a claim which was earliest recorded from perennial (Republican at the time) candidate Andy Martin in 2004, got circulated by a couple of Clinton staffers during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary<ref>They were let go, but leaked DNC emails in 2016 included some discussion of the possibility of spreading rumors that Bernie Sanders was an atheist, so clearly there were still some in the organization who considered [[Abomination Accusation Attack]]s against primary opponents fair play. MOD: Oh, and the wording of this footnote shows that at least one Troper thinks that being an atheist is an abomination.</ref>, but was much more enthusiastically taken up thereafter by the political right<ref>We say 'political right' rather than 'Republican Party' because, while lots of talk show hosts and pundits were quite up-front about accusing Obama of not being a natural-born citizen, no major member of the GOP actually stated a belief that he was not eligible to be President -- although some were certainly quite happy to talk about his eligibility as if it were an open question.</ref> (including, funnily enough, [[Donald Trump]], who succeeded Obama eight years later). He eventually got so annoyed with this that he released his long-form birth certificate, then [[Crowning Moment of Funny|splashed it on a mug with the slogan "Made in the USA"]] and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|killed]] [[Osama Bin Laden]] about two days later, which effectively shut up all but the [[Vocal Minority|noisiest]] of the "birther theorists."
Chester A. Arthur was accused by Arthur Hinman of being born in Ireland. No one took up that story, so Hinman then accused Chester of being born in Canada. Nobody could decide which was worse, so they elected Chester Vice President.
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Just to mention, the Republican Party's rules are pretty much the same as far as this goes. The main differences are that they make far less use of caucuses and allocate delegates by winner-takes-all or by congressional district for many states, not proportionally to popular vote, and do not use the "superdelegate" system. There was once a time when Democrats didn't use superdelegates either, but after George McGovern's disastrous run in 1972—in which he picked Sam Eagleton, who proved to have had psychiatric issues in the past (as well as later having been found to have made some controversial remarks about McGovern to the press), as his running mate—and [[Jimmy Carter]]'s loss to [[Ronald Reagan]] in 1980, they added this feature as a safeguard. This has not been without controversy, and the irony of the party whose name means "rule by the people" having a cadre of insiders (initially 14% of the delegate votes, increasing over the years to 20% in 2016) to stack the deck is not lost on commentators. During the 2016 Democratic primary, tensions arose between supporters of [[Hillary Clinton]] and [[Bernie Sanders]] over DNC actions that seemed to show unfair favor to Clinton, and then boiled over<ref>Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the DNC chair, resigned over the scandal, and while Sanders rallied his supporters behind Clinton after she secured the nomination and was offered some concessions when it came time to write the party platform, Clinton struggled with poor favorability ratings, even among those who voted for her.</ref> when DNC emails were leaked and revealed party officials talking about Clinton as if her nomination were a ''fait accompli'' and badmouthing Sanders's campaign -- or even acting behind the scenes to undermine it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the often-contentious Republican primary probably had GOP leaders ''wishing'' they had some superdelegates to throw around, especially as [[Donald Trump]] accumulated popular support and controversy in equal measure while the more "conventional" candidates couldn't seem to find their footing.<ref>The winner-take-all nature of most of the primary races also worked to Trump's advantage. There were several conventional candidates with reasonable chances, so nobody could command a majority of primary voters, but whichever one nosed out ahead of the rest, as Trump usually did, would take 100% of the delegates up for grabs. Had the delegates been distributed proportionally, no candidate would have come to the convention with a majority, which would have led to much more back-room politicking to select the final nominee.</ref> Conventional wisdom was that the GOP's relatively undisciplined process had produced an undisciplined candidate who would not only lose the general election but hurt the party's "down-ballot" candidates for Congress, but then Trump won the general election, and the Republicans also won control of the Senate and maintained their control of the House. The future of primaries and superdelegates is surely a major topic of discussion in both political parties; we'll have an update when 2020 rolls around.
== Voting ==
The minimum voting age in most of the USA is 18.<ref>There are a few states that let 17-year-old citizens vote in primaries if they will be 18 when the actual election comes around.</ref>
The franchise is ''not'' universal. American citizens can actually lose the right to vote; there are no constitutional protections guaranteeing the franchise to citizens of voting age (the way there are in Canada). Move out of the country for a few years (how long depends on the state in question); get sent to jail on a felony<ref>As of July 2024</ref> anywhere but Maine, Vermont, or DC; or simply be left standing in line when the polls are scheduled to close — any of these can take away an American's ballot. And if you live in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands, you aren't allowed to vote for President.
Citizens get to vote separately for each position - from President all the way down to city councillor or the equivalent. It's possible to vote for an executive from one party and a legislature from another party, which if everybody does that pretty much guarantees governmental deadlock. Some states elect ''judges''.<ref>Which makes people outside of the USA wonder how they can be impartial if they have to curry favor every four years.</ref>
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[[Category:Useful Notes/The United States]]▼
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[[Category:Politics]]
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