Gongol.com Archives: January 2025
January 15, 2025
If it hadn't been for a particularly ungraceful snub of the Vice President by the husband of a returning Senator, it's likely that few Americans would have noted that the 119th Congress has been in session since January 3rd. Hearings are underway, bills and resolutions have been submitted, and leaders have been elected. ■ The election for the Speaker of the House garnered more attention than usual this year, but the entire seating of the new Congress receives a mere fraction of the attention paid to the farewell activities of the outgoing President and the inaugural preparations for the next. The latter shouldn't so dramatically overshadow the former. ■ The Constitution of the United States addresses the formation of Congress first, in Article I. The Executive Branch is created in Article II. By a reasonable interpretation of the plain language, that should be an indication that we should show at least as much enthusiasm when Congress gets its work underway as when a new President is sworn in. ■ But the unfortunate way in which the Presidency has been treated more and more as an imperial office -- and the steady surrender of real Congressional expertise and legislation to the whims of executive orders and administrative rule-making -- has given the public the impression that the individual person of the President matters more to the direction of the country than the makeup of the Congress expressly elected to represent their interests. That isn't a party problem; both major parties have taken an active part in enlarging and extending the Presidency and in neutering the Congress. ■ It is a national problem instead. And it is one in which it is hard to imagine change coming about without steady, committed effort. Things shouldn't change dramatically just because the Oval Office changes hands; that's not how checks and balances are supposed to work. The House of Representatives is supposed to be where we get our whims and tempers out, the Senate is supposed to put the brakes on bad ideas, and the President is supposed to reject the worst of the bad ideas that still get through, while primarily doing what he or she is instructed to do by Congress. The State of the Union address should never have turned into a campaign-style stump speech; it's supposed to be the report of an agent back to the principals who have the authority to fire him or her. ■ Some complain that they think the Constitution is inadequate to the task of running the United States in its current size. To the contrary, the Constitutional order -- the very thing that officers of the government are sworn to uphold -- is entirely capable of scaling itself effectively, provided that we choose to observe it rigorously. But the demand to do that can come only from the voting public.
