I can dream, can’t I?
Jim Thompson
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
In my day job, I write assessment reports which enable new, large manufacturing construction projects to be financed. Accompanying these are usually a “closing dinner” to celebrate the successful financing. I have been to over 20 such fêtes.
Often, at these dinners, I am toasted for my work to which my response is always a consistent, “I am just a poor farm boy from southern Ohio.” In the last 32 years, these projects have grown from about $90 million to $400 million in size for the same capacity. Which means, of course, you must pay much more for the products made by these factories. Yet, this column is not about inflation.
Several columns ago, I wrote about the idea of moving the Justice Department to reporting to the Supreme Court and out of the Executive Branch.
The following idea is promulgated with the same credentials I always use, i.e., “I am just a poor farm boy from southern Ohio.”
I propose we bifurcate the top job, president of the United States. In other words, cut it in two.
The first activist president was Andrew Jackson, followed by Abraham Lincoln. In the 20th century, there was Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, followed by many more up to this day.
We could settle things down, controversy-wise, with the following separation of powers and policies:
• Congress would be charged with coming up with a list of national objectives. There would be one and only one always on the list – national defense.
• Congress would come up with a list of 30 or so other broad-brush objectives beyond national defense.
• These would be put to a national vote every five years. According to the votes they receive, the top vote getters would constitute our national objectives. These would be No. 2 (defense always being No. 1) down to the point we run out of annual tax revenues. The winners would be enshrined as our national five-year plan (everything the communists did was not bad!).
The Executive Branch, the president, would oversee the military, as now, and efficiently administer the five-year plan. Executive orders, except in the case of war, would be abolished.
In this new scheme, much like the city manager form of local government works now, the president is charged with administering the federal government, not setting policy. The parties would put forth candidates based on their administrative qualities, nothing else.
Congress takes the first cut at the national priorities, but the voters are the final arbiters. The president solely administrates. Presidential races would be far less contentious.
This whole scheme, of course, would take a constitutional congress to be adopted. But I can dream, can’t I?
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
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