The share of Republicans who say presidents could operate more effectively if they did not have to worry so much about Congress and the courts increased 16 percentage points over the past year, from 27% in March 2018 to 43% this past July.
So says the Pew Research Center in a recent tweet about a poll it had taken.
In case you can’t see the fine print above, the people who were surveyed were given two choices and had to pick one:
- Many of the country’s problems could be dealt with more effectively if U.S. presidents didn’t have to worry so much about Congress and the courts.
- It would be too risky to give U.S. presidents more power to deal directly with many of the country’s problems.
The Pew researchers seem to think that if you believe option 1, you can’t believe option 2, and if you believe option 2, you can’t believe option 1. I bet many people are like me in that they believe both options. That is, the problems could be dealt with more effectively if U.S. presidents weren’t so constrained by Congress and the courts and giving the U.S. president that power would be too risky.
I’ve often argued that the advantage of the Parliamentary system that I grew up with in Canada is that the government can solve a problem more quickly and that the disadvantage is that it can create problems more quickly. As an example of the former, look at the Liberal Party’s and later Conservative Party’s tremendous success at reducing Canada’s federal debt as a percentage of GDP.
My mother had a saying that I’m sure others have heard: “Ask a stupid question; get a stupid answer.”
Now, I bet the Pew researchers are right to think that there’s a high positive correlation between the belief that unconstrained U.S. presidents can deal with problems more effectively and the belief that U.S. presidents should be given such powers.
But why assume? A better methodology would be for the researchers to ask the following question.
Should U.S. presidents, whether Republican or Democrat, be:
More constrained by Congress and the courts than they are now?
Less constrained by Congress and the courts than they are now?
Constrained by Congress and the courts to the same extent they are now?
READER COMMENTS
Thaomas
Dec 8 2019 at 6:24pm
Good suggestion. My hypothesis is that people from both parties move toward favoring more power for presidents when their party holds the presidency. It would be interesting to know in a specific situation which party moves more.
robc
Dec 9 2019 at 7:59am
I am not sure this answers which party moves more, but one piece of evidence might be that there are more GOP never-Trumpers than there were Dem never-Obamas.
nobody.really
Dec 9 2019 at 10:27pm
I’ll bet Henderson is right. And yes, I prefer his design of the question.
But what accounts for the fact that when those “many people” happen to be Republicans, they are 43% likely to pick option 1, but not when those “many people” happen to be Democrats or Independents? It is not sufficient to observe that both statements can be true; we need to explain the disparities. And it would appear that Republicans are leaning ever more authoritarian–even more so than Democrats leaned authoritarian during the Obama years.
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