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Presidential Question Time

By catdynamics on February 7, 2010.

There was a truly weird advert or contributed op-ed on the radio a couple of days ago.

Some conservative anti-tax guy, and a left-wing editor had joined in calling for a US "Question Time", a la the UK "Question Time" in Parliament.
ie the President doing questions and answers with Congress, formally.

Inspired, in part, I suspect, by Obama's performance against the congressional republicans in a question and answer session, though conservative dude brought out the old teleprompter canard against Obama in explaining why he thought it was a good idea.

There is just one slight problem: "Question Time" in the UK is not a matter of having a debate, or honing the great political leaders of the future.

Question Time is about being Answerable - the Prime Minister of the UK is Answerable to Parliament and therefore must appear before it and Answer Questions from Members of Parliament.
That is what it is about.
It is to establish the primacy of the Parliament over the Executive.

That is not the US system, at all, where the President is co-equal with Congress, as one of three semi-independent branches of government.
Congress, ultimately is supreme, as they have the power of the budget and can put forward constitutional amendments, not to mention impeach both the President and judges, but making the President appear before Congress regularly, even as custom rather than duty, would fundamentally alter the balance of powers and make the President effectively directly subservient to Congress.

Now, a case can be made that Congress ought to rein in the Imperial Presidency, and that the Executive is over strong within the triumvirate, but if that is the argument, then the case for a US "Question Time" needs to be made based on that argument, not some red herring about debate.

Not that Obama, or any President, is likely to be stupid enough to voluntarily agree to such.

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In theory, Congress should be supreme. In practice, they have ceded a lot of power to the President. Yet another parallel with the Roman Republic.

One important difference is that in a parliamentary system the Prime Minister is an MP (at least that's true of the UK and Australia). Thus at Question Time the Parliament is holding one of their own accountable. The US President is a separate entity, and its officeholder need not have any congressional experience. (Obama is the first President since Nixon to have spent any time in the Senate. Bush 41 and Ford had been in the House of Representatives; Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 collectively have zero congressional experience.) So the sense of questioning "one of their own" would not be present in the US. Obama calculated, correctly, that he could handle the questions in real time. Reagan (in his first time, before signs of senility started to appear) and Clinton would probably have done well with the format. The two Bushes would have fared badly.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 08 Feb 2010 #permalink

Exactly.
The Congress is ultimately supreme in that it can, if it has the collective will, override either of the two parts of government.
But, the President is not part of Congress and not answerable to it on a day-to-day basis - as opposed to in the gross, in that the Pres. must account for spending and be subservient to the Law, in theory.

What amazed me was how shallow the suggestion of "Question Time: USA" was, the rationale completely missed both the point of the UK process, and the effects on the US system.

A Prime Minister in a parliamentary system is an odd bird though. They can often be members of either house of parliament. They can usually be questioned by either house of parliament because they are part of the executive branch.

While the legality of the idea of a Presidential question time is dubious, the idea of more direct questions isn't bad. Everybody from the press on down is way too deferential, and it's become a bit ... monarchial. "Question hour" through spokesmen which is what happens now is not very effective.

I'm getting there.
I presume your refer to the press release claiming Ia are (mostly) WD mergers.
Haven't seen the paper yet.
I'm organisering, and a bit behind on real science.

I think I will comment, real soon now.

Hear, hear!!!

Actually, that's maybe why not. When you have to explain to 25% of the population what the difference between "here, here", and "hear, hear" is, erudite discourse is probably not the way to win over hearts and minds.