Late Night Drafts; Morning Confusions: part II

Presidents: why bother?

Alright, so, let's get the basics out of the way. The American government is set up as such: there are three branches of government. The Legislative branch makes new laws. The Judicial branch, which basically makes sure people follow the laws (the court system is held within this branch). Finally, you have the executive branch. This branch is basically the President, Vice President, and his little peanut gallery (aka his cabinet).

The Presidents job is essentially to say "yay" or "nay" to everything. If a bill makes it through congress, it goes to the President, who basically has the power to sign it into law or to say "herp derp I do what I want," veto the bill, and sent it back to congress, who can revise the bill and try again. Or, if they receive 2/3rd's majority, can overthrow the presidents veto and make it a law anyways.

Sooooo... why? What's the point of the President again? He approves bills that have already gone through a vigorous screening period that can last years just to get tossed back and forth between the House of Representatives and the Senate (which together make up Congress)? And even if he doesn't like the bill Congress can pass it regardless of what he says?

Here's a quote from WhiteHouse.gov. "In order to pass legislation and send it to the President for his signature, both the house and the Senate must pass the same bill by majority vote. If the president vetoes a bill, they may override his veto by passing the bill again in each chamber with at least two-thirds of each body voting in favor."

Oh yeah and also the Pres can even have his personal appointments denied by Congress. What's that? The President is kind of a useless figurehead? "Many of the duties as head of state are ceremonial and convey no real power." - Wikipedia.

One of the main jobs of the President is to plan the country's budget. However, even when he does that, Congress can just be like "naw man you're dumb," and throw out his budget.


The President does have executive power, however. If he wants to, he can just be like "bam, I made this law up out of thin air and there's nothing you can do about it." That's fine and dandy, I guess, as long as you want a dictator.

What I'm getting at here is why should we even have a president? People will try to tell you that we need all three branches of government to have "checks and balances" and to make sure that no one branch gets out of control. We could accomplish the same thing with two branches. The President can stonewall a perfectly good bill so it doesn't become a law just because he doesn't like it. That's not balanced at all, in my opinion.

So I'd like some honest feedback here. And I mean real feedback. Not the typical "no... just no," that I get when I put out some crazy idea. Yeah Matt, I'm talking about you. And I still think that this country could get itself some help if it started up some factories. It'd be creating jobs, we'd be creating goods that we could export, we could use renewable energy to run them. But no. You never listen.