r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago
California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs
https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago
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u/DemiserofD 1d ago
But what has caused it?
I have a theory that it all is because of changing Senators to no longer be appointed. Someone tell me if this is crazy, but...
Before, Governors appointed Senators. They were supposed to be more free to focus on being skilled at their jobs rather than being skilled at getting elected.
Governors, in turn, had to be decent at their jobs, because they had a direct impact on their own state. If they were bad at their job, their own state would feel it first and immediately, and they'd be rapidly replaced(because their actions would be more obviously incompetent), so Governors were far more likely to be competent. They would, in turn, use that same skill to appoint skilled Senators, because those, too, would be a reflection on them.
But nowadays, Senators are largely divorced from their states. There's way more disconnect between them and the people, so people feel perfectly fine just electing the same guy again and again, no matter what they do. A lot of people don't even know who their Senators ARE.
This in turn has naturally led to senators becoming increasingly incompetent and beholden to their party rather than to their state's people, because the state's people will just vote for them regardless as long as they're still in the same party. Basically, Senators haven't NEEDED to be competent, and in absence of an incentive, things tend to regress to the mean.
And this has led to Federal Agencies and the Presidency getting more and more power, as Senators have become increasingly incompetent. Nowadays, the Senate couldn't really take control over things even if they wanted to, because they just don't have the skill to manage it.
Hence the 'imperial presidency'; a single overarching power against which the senate is incapable of standing without demonstrating their own incompetence, which by nature goes against the interests of the Party. As long as the president is willing to work with their own party, everything is fine...but what happens if you get a president who doesn't care what anyone else thinks? You end up with a situation where everyone is just kinda forced to go along with whatever they do, for lack of a better option.