Cross-posted in Mefi. Very thoughtful, detailed article.

Great article, thanks!

Very good article, but very scary. If Australia continues to go down the path of following what the US does in every way, there lies our future.

Also, it seems that there is a dramatic failure in the 'principle of parity' there (that responsibility must equal authority). The president seems to be responsible for every single thing that happens in the US, but has little authority to do anything effective about it. It's almost as if a control freak culture has developed in that the president needs to know about every little detail of everything every day. Even in my tiny part of the world, if I had to know what every single one of my ~60 staff are doing every day, I would go fucking nuts. Surely, if you appoint someone to a high-level nationally strategic post, you trust them enough to do their job and tell you what you need to know when you need to know it. I may be simplifying things (perhaps dramatically so), but the whole things looks completely fucked-up and smacks of an attitude that, if you tell someone else about a problem, it becomes their problem and not yours.

The president seems to be responsible for every single thing that happens in the US, but has little authority to do anything effective about it.

I think a lot of this has to do with public ignorance about the three branches of government - I mean, all Americans know that they exist but there seems to be a kind of misconception that the Executive Branch is the one in charge when that's not actually Constitutionally true. The President, especially, is seen as being able to (at least in theory) "control" Congress, which not only isn't actually possible, it's not his job. So, everything demands a Presidential response whether it's actually in his purview or not since there's a misconception that the Executive Branch "controls" the other two branches. In the case of the Supreme Court, it's kind of easy to see how that view happens since the justices are all appointed by the President, but they still have to be confirmed by Congress... which except for the fact that it becomes a pissing match about the President and what his appointees say about his politics, is largely ignored.

(I'm talking about reactions I've seen in the public "at large," not necessarily people who are informed about politics or even the media itself.)