In an otherwise sterling clarion call to stop Mitt Romney, John Hawkins of Right Wing News here displays what is fundamentally wrong with America's current conception of itself as a nation:
"A Republican president IS the conservative movement."
If that's true, then why are we bothering electing representatives and Senators? Why not simply go for dictatorship? One almost wonders if this is some weird transposition of a conception of religious vicariousness to politics: one man dying for the nation and all that.
No. America led by a single (blended strong) man instead of the founders' America of a nation governed through intimate representation is what the last 100 years have been all about. Since 1913 this country has had 435 representatives in the US House when by today it should have grown to 10,267.
Presidents are elected by electors after all, not by the people. I would rather have 10,367 electors next autumn than today's measly, rich, corrupt 535, precisely because a president would have to persuade a lot more of them, not just before inauguration day, but for the entire four years of his term in office thereafter.
As things stand, however, a president ignores the Congress once he gets elected. Obama has done so spectacularly, even when his own party controlled the House. And make no mistake about it, the less represented you are, the happier is Washington DC, the better to stick it to you, my dear.
An adequately sized Congress is the people, not the president, otherwise America is finished, so-called conservative president or no. Representation, not the presidency, was the most significant issue debated in the ratification debates.
That's why Congress is held in record low esteem today: IT DOES NOT REPRESENT US.
