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Project 2029 and Other Silly Ideas [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-19

Introduction

This started off as comments in the “Other ideas” text box of a survey (and $$$ appeal) from Our Revolution. I’ve had these ideas for some time. Maybe it is time to put them out to a wider audience.

To be clear. I do not disagree with the organization or their survey. In fact, I wholeheartedly support them (within the limites of my retirement income). But a survey can only cover so much and their list of choices, items was pretty long. But each one is just a point solution. We are past point solutions by now. The problem is far bigger and more fundamental than what can be managed with Duct Tape.

We cannot go back to status quo ante. It's gone. Forever. The survey (actually most surveys) left out structural government reform. Trump has broken the "checks and balances" and we can't hope that a future POTUS will not do the same. It was a nice idea in 1789 but... We now have a King. And there is no going back to some mythical comfort zone involving a benevolent President. The choice is the hard work of change now or devolution and violence followed (possibly, hopefully) by some form of recovery of the rule of law and domestic reconciliation.

How Did We Get Here?

Things worked out reasonably well in the beginning. We lucked out with President Washington. There was not much to government in those days and fewer examples of good government to learn from. They just ended a war so there was little military ambition. There was little more than trails and crude dirt roads so no Department of Transportation yet. Life was simple and on foot or horseback. George was also tired of being away from home so he only wanted to serve two terms, setting a comforting precedent. Only men “of property” could vote and therefore hold power so everybody sort of got along, at least until the Civil War. But we were still a colony economically. The economy ran off of the inequalities built into slave and indentured labor which is how most colonies work. The only change was who was the master. London based lords were gone but only replaced by local equivalents. The slave trade provided labor in the South until 1863 and immigration supplied labor in the north. First there were the Irish and then all sorts of impoverished Europeans followed by Asians, South Americans, and others as the country and economy expanded. The end result has been the diminishing of the size and power of the population of the original English colonial immigrants. The old dominance of white colonial aristocracy and culturally allied “yeoman” citizenry dissolved as Taco Trucks started showing up on every street corner. The old order of government by our (culturally English) “Betters” along with their “gentleman’s agreements” about where the boundaries of behavior were no longer held. Nostalgia for that long gone world is the core of MAGA desire.

We have a system based on “gentleman’s agreements” from long ago about sharing power. The Constitution was designed on a gentleman’s abhorrence of “parties” all the while forming parties among themselves while busy writing and assenting to its party-neutral provisions. George could have been King and more than a few wanted him to be one. Many wanted to call him “Your Excellency” but he objected. His choice to gracefully step down was simply a matter of dumb luck. The Constitution did and would still support a King with the only difference being instead of inheriting one like all the others, ours would be on a four year lease with the option to renew. It is still a King in substance as we are finding out day by day. In a world of gentleman’s agreements, there would be no need for parties because gentlemen are all members of the same club — except we have always had parties just like all other human societies.

Political parties are a very good organizational structure when there are both competing and common interests. Individuals with common interests congregate together to accumulate power when and where their interests are in competition with other divergent interests. Government systems must take competing parties into account and have rules to govern behavior with them. Otherwise, they eventually fail. That is how we bungled our way into the Civil War. The gentleman’s agreements around slavery broke down and there was nothing else to contain the conflict. The post-war Amendments reflect some attempts to set future legal boundaries but history has shown their lack of effectiveness. That worked for a while but the steady increase in immigration has brought new interests (and parties) into the dynamic mix. The center would inevitably no longer hold.

The system has been visibly failing and falling apart since Watergate. Actually, it started before the election of JFK. Every President before him was Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Then the Irish had finally arrived and the WASP gentleman’s agreements started to fray. Watergate was the rip and the tear that started the patching of the fabric of government.

The first patch was a Special Prosecutor. There were always political shenanigans before but it had always been within the club and “boys will be boys”. No longer. The Attorney General became a convicted criminal. What was once acceptable no longer was. But "Special Prosecutors" are not a solution, they are an indication of failure to keep law enforcement and the prosecutorial power explicitly independent of political manipulation.

In recent years we have had one Continuing Resolution after another. Congress has passed few if any budgets in the years since the Clinton era. The Constitution requires a budget to be passed every year but it has no consequences should Congress fail to pass one. Again, in a world of gentleman’s agreements it is unthinkable that a group of gentlemen could not come to such an agreement — until they could not. That is not governing and it is a weakness that is easily exploited by parties that want to grab or hold on to power with no consequences.

The current disaster of a budget is also a prime example of incompetence combined with fixed terms. This is why the first six months or so are the only important time in a Congress. Everybody knows when the next election starts right down to the minute so all of the controversial stuff gets done right away or not at all and the rest of the time is spent campaigning in hope that the electorate forgets what did or did not happen. The Big Beautiful Bill is a prime example of the negative to be forgotten and the Infrastructure Law from Biden and Pelosi got through before “lame duck” set in. And they did not set the pattern, Obama did the same thing to get the ACA done. These patterns are not “the system works” but indications of failure. Fixed terms encourages if not mandates this kind of behavior. This too seemed like a good idea at the time.

Another indication of this fundamental failure is the inexperience and incompetence of both Congress and the Executive. Since POTUS is a position that anyone can be elected to regardless of qualifications and experience, Trump is what we get. At least with a King, the only candidate is the first born son or daughter, not any con man or carney barker who can attract enough attention and cash to make a run. We know who the next king or queen will be on the day they were born and their whole life is training for the job. In Charles III’s case, his training lasted long past retirement age. His son William at least will have a decade or so as Prince of Wales and years before that as a royal-in-training… A lot of the current Congress is not much better than Trump’s administration. The House is a good place for a politician to start out. Their first term is schooling for what follows. Experience as a junior member prepares one to be a senior member. Most of the current GOP has little to no experience in actual governing. Junior members run committees based on celebrity status. They get in power but cannot get even the basic stuff done. They have not had the experience of multiple contiguous sessions in power and it shows. Margaret Thatcher had a run longer than Reagan to get her policies through. We have fits and starts. This results in legislative grandstanding and performance pieces, not governing and there are no consequences for that behavior because everybody knows that POTUS is the important one. Congress seems filled with little more than court jesters. And the electorate knows it.

Separating powers seems a good idea so long as checks and balances are in effect. except that there is rarely balance and checks are worthless unless there are consequences. They only work if there is a gentleman’s agreement that I will balance my checks if you balance yours. What has happened since Nixon and the Unitary Executive is that the balance is gone and Congress no longer has the will to check the executive. Congress has effectively surrendered its power with no consequences. They powerlessly pass “resolutions” and no one takes them seriously or to account. Since they no longer have any real power, their elections do not matter. They get re-elected repeatedly anyway as fewer voters even bother to go through the motions anymore. Each Representative and Senator is an “independent” member regardless of party and as a result, can slip by the burden of supporting (and taking the heat for) party policies. Their primary qualification is whether the voter would like to have a beer with them. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is the primary evidence of that.

We have also devolved into a place where every “check” by Congress must go through the Courts all the way to SCOTUS before an administration would even respond. There is a reason why Leonard Leo concentrated on it. Dred Scott and Dobbs are notorious for a reason but they are not the exception. Right now SCOTUS is involved where the Constitution does not even give it standing simply because there are only three branches and the other two are fighting to a standstill.

The aggregation of power by the Executive was probably inevitable and we now have a de facto King/Emperor/Dictator. We should not be surprised. The problem with power is not in the power itself. The problem is in the accountability and consequences for using that power. That is precisely the problem with the Divine Rights of Kings, something that Charles I found out the hard way by losing his head. English Parliaments since that time have increasingly limited that power such that Charles III is pretty much limited to quietly lobbying the government to protect the financial assets of his Royal Estates. We do not even have that and it is time that we do. The British had the same problem but they solved it.

The British are very quaint in how they enforce government relationships through ritual. I brought up Charles I for this reason. He and Parliament didn’t get along (to be polite). To wit:

On 20 January 1649, in Westminster Hall, the trial began with a moment of high drama. After the proceedings were declared open, Solicitor General John Cook rose to announce the indictment. Standing immediately to the right of the King, he began to speak, but he had uttered only a few words when Charles attempted to stop him by tapping him sharply on the shoulder with his cane and ordering him to "Hold". Cook ignored him and continued, so Charles poked him a second time and rose to speak, but Cook continued. At that point Charles, incensed at being ignored, struck Cook across the shoulder with his cane so forcefully that the ornate silver tip broke off, rolled down Cook's gown and clattered onto the floor between them. Nobody was willing to pick it up for him, so Charles had to stoop down to retrieve it himself. — Wikipedia

This is from his trial proceeding. His argument against the whole trial was:

When given the opportunity to speak, Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch.[10] He believed that his own authority to rule had been due to the divine right of kings given to him by God, and by the traditions and laws of England when he was crowned and anointed, and that the power wielded by those trying him was simply that of force of arms.[10] Charles insisted that the trial was illegal, explaining, "No learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King ... one of their maxims is, that the King can do no wrong.

There are two points here. First, in his argument, a King can do no wrong. What this really means is that there are no consequences for what he does. If there is no right or wrong, that is because there is no consequences for that act. We have not only been here before but that is where we are now. The problem is not power. The problem is when there is no consequence for exercising that power.

The second point is the subtle bit at the end of the first quote where Charles had to stoop down himself to retrieve the tip of his cane. This act of his, stooping to pick up the tip of one of his symbols of power in front of Parliament was a bow to Parliament, the indication that he is not sovereign but subject to the Parliament. Is this interpretation by Parliament a stretch? Sure it is but it had consequences. The trial did not end well for Charles.

As a result of this and other actions by Kings, this has resulted in the quaint but important ritual whenever the King/Queen addresses the House. Whenever this event happens, most often at the opening of a new Parliament, all the members assemble in their seats. The King then approaches the door to the House but the doors are slammed shut. The Black Rod, a senior officer of the House of Lords, then bangs on the door demanding entrance for the monarch. This shouted demand is repeated three times until the house shouts back to open the door. Note that the whole ritual asserts parliament’s independence. Quaint but effectively makes the point.

The Founders tried to solve that same problem by the notion of “Checks and Balances”. However, while such a system works in the small world of gentlemen, it does not scale well as proven by our own history. It only works when both sides are equally committed to being gentlemen. When that is not the case, as it is right now, the solution becomes a contest for which of the two sides is “more equal”. Congress is primary (more equal) as implied (and written) in the Constitution but that has been conveniently forgotten for understandable reasons. The President is just one person so the focus of attention for everybody going all the way back to George Washington is easy. The Founders knew this which is why Washington insisted on the address of “Mr President”. We have forgotten. Where we do not have quaint rituals, we need to put in place process defined by law.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Returning to the status quo ante, as attractive a “comfort zone” it may be, is not possible simply because what has happened in the last several decades have destroyed it. Just as MAGA cannot roll back time to 1950 or 1860, neither can “progressives” or anyone else horrified by what is going on roll things back prior to Reagan. Note that MAGA picks on LGBQT+ and “illegal immigrants”, i.e. “brown people” and not African Americans or Catholics is because there are now economically and politically powerful African Americans and Catholics. Be rude and dismissive to a Black man and you might find out that he is a former NBA star who turned his athletic career into the money pump that built the corporation that you no longer work for. You have probably already done business or worked for a wealthy Irish Catholic (no longer identifiable by his/her “Brogue”) and therefore know better. MAGA cannot go back to that world where their superiority was de facto recognized. Neither can the rest of us go back to a world where politics, although still a contact sport, was played by rules that everybody, as gentlemen, followed.

The solution is to change how our government works so that the few who lust for power enough to break the rules cannot do so without facing real accountability and consequences by the many. This starts by recognizing that persons with common interests will organize themselves into groups to increase their power in a world of competing interests. A system that is composed of parties functions properly when the leaders of parties are accountable to the members of the party and the members of a party are accountable to the constituents who put them into power. This is not a feel-good, fuzzy relationship. A party states its goals, i.e. the “platform”, and each of the members is identified with that platform. This means that whatever the policy is in the platform, that is what each member runs on. If there are hidden agenda items, and there often are, those too count and members must run on and be held accountable. No “I’m independent and am only representing MY district/state” allowed. The prime examples here are Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to name but a few. The party leadership is responsible to the members to effectively execute those policies. In sum, if one is voting for Lisa or Susan, they understand that they are really voting for Mike Johnson. Notice I am saying Johnson and not Trump or whoever it was who replaced McConnell.

It may seem that I am implying a “Westminster Parliament” system. To be clear, I am not implying, I am advocating for a very simple reason. It has the checks that our system lacks. I brought up gentleman’s agreements above for a reason. We have no such agreements anymore and must devise something new. In a parliamentary system the only elected office of interest is to be a member of the House/Senate. After that, a member must prove themselves to the party to eventually rise to the level of Minister or Prime Minister. In other words, Teresa May or Liz Truss were bad but they were at least competent enough to rise to the leadership even though they didn't last long. Sure, the Tories put them up and pushed them out but then the Tories ended up out themselves for that mess as well. There must be consequences.

We will start with the Balance of Power. When we see this we think of Congress vs. POTUS but we miss the point. The Constitution does give Congress priority through the Power of the Purse etc. but only sort of. They allocate and authorize but the separate Executive actually does the work. Of course, the ultimate check is the vote of the people but… I learned a long time ago by both being a child and raising a few that whenever there is more than one responsible, there is finger pointing. Sure, the ultimate check is an angry electorate but who do they focus their anger toward, the one who actually messed up or the one pointed to by the loudest? I dare you to tell me that you have never seen this behavior. How else to explain the phenomena of “Mid-terms”? We blame the President because he (still is “Him”) center stage and take it out on Congress since we have to wait another two+ years to replace him. In a Parliamentary system the “He/She” is the Prime Minister, aka PM, and we take it out on the PM by voting out our individual Representative. This does two things. Our individual Representative stays very sensitive to what the PM and “front bench” are doing because his/her job depends on it. The feedback loop is very short because there is no ambiguity as to who is the guilty party. It also applies in the inverse. We vote for our individual Representative because we want his or her leader to be the PM. This would turn the “All politics is local” idea on its head. The ultimate check to power is not one branch to another but the electorate to the one government — and the closest person to the electorate is their Representative.

I mentioned Fixed Terms as a problem above. Trump won't be gone until Jan 2029 and we are stuck with Mike Johnson until January 2027. A parliamentary system has a maximum for a term but only maximum. The UK has a five year term but Australia has a three year term. The maximum limit is not as important as the fact that it can and often is shorter because the government in power can call or be forced to call for new elections at any time. This occurs under two conditions. First, the government may think that they are popular enough that it would be a good gamble to call an early election now effectively resetting the clock to give themselves more time in power. Sometimes they lose the gamble and the election. New elections can also be forced on the government. This is most commonly done by a vote of “No Confidence”. Right now, Trump and Johnson are tanking but nothing will happen until 2026 and 2028. This is how they can get away with DOGE and The Big Beautiful Bill. No one can file a No Confidence so we are stuck. They hope we forget or die of despair in the meantime. The damage will be done and dusted by then. In a parliamentary system, the government would fall and be gone in new elections. An electorate that has immediate recourse and immediate results is a powerful check on power.

Australia, in learning from our and British mistakes, added something else called “Double Dissolution”.

A double dissolution in Australia is a constitutional procedure where both houses of Parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate, are dissolved to hold a federal election. This typically occurs when there is a deadlock over legislation, allowing voters to decide on the proposed laws and potentially change the composition of both houses at the same time.

They never have Continuing Resolutions. because of this. This takes power away from the legislative arsonists of which we have too many. A parliament that pulls this stunt/trigger is shooting itself. Note that the House and Senate must agree to the legislation and while the House has a maximum three year term, the Senate has a six year term staggered in thirds like ours. Wanna really piss off your Senate party members? Just do this in the House and force everybody, especially those within the first two years of their term back into an election. In sum, The accountability and consequences are clear and direct. If the government cannot or will not do its job, the electorate can replace it. Just the threat of such an election gives the leadership the power to break deadlocks or force the results it wants from its recalcitrant ranks. All those blackmail amendments for pet projects or poison pills now have a check. Given the choice of getting a pet amendment by the threat of withholding a vote and being forced to run for office again right now, members tend to fall in line pretty quickly. Parliaments have been around a long time and have learned how to work with even fiercely difficult parties. All democracies other than ours use them. But reshaping Congress is not enough. It is time to also look at the Executive.

Trump and his blatant abuse of power seems to be the biggest problem and therefore it takes up all the attention leaving a gelded and feckless Congress out of sight and out of mind. But if we do not want a King — and especially a King Trump, we have to replace POTUS with something else. The anarchist’s fever dream of a utopia without government is a fantasy. Something will replace the prominence of our current POTUS. We are a very large country with a very large economy and the extensive infrastructure necessary to support all of our 330,000,000 people. It cannot organize itself by itself. Our only choice is what that government will be.

So how do we fix POTUS? We take a lesson from Charles I. POTUS becomes subservient to Congress, not only in theory or by “Gentleman’s Agreement” but by force of law. To use a term from the British Commonwealth, we turn POTUS into the equivalent of a “Governor General”. In the former British colonies such as Canada or Australia, the British Crown, really the UK Parliament, appoints a Governor General. He or she has a few simple powers. They “Assent” to or veto legislation in the name of the Crown, preside as Head of State for certain occasions, mostly ceremonial, and act as an advisor and point of continuity within the government. When a Commonwealth country has contemplated or acted on becoming fully independent, they have replaced the Crown appointed Governor General with a chosen President but he or she does not acquire increased powers for that office. The details of what limited powers this person has are less important than the fact that they are limited. What is significant is the administration and power of the executive function now resides in the House of Representatives, i.e. the Prime Minister and his/her Cabinet. To be specific, this would be Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries. The function of President’s Cabinet moves to the House and its members would be House members, most likely the chairs of the current House committees with primary oversight of those departments and agencies.

We also have to deal with the subversion of the Judiciary. There are two parts to this. The Courts themselves need to not only be independent but more resistant to political manipulation. Judges have lifetime appointments but other than an age limit there are no other requirements. As a result, we have gotten out-of-the-blue political appointments to the highest levels of effectively “nobodies” for no other reason than politics. “Packing the Court” has been a battle cry since the very beginning. Having minimal requirements in the beginning made sense in 1790 but it has been a long time since we could count the number of sitting judges/justices on two hands. We should set minimum experience standards. For example, one cannot be eligible for a Federal District Judge position without at least five years experience as a trial judge at the State or local level. An Appellate Justice position is a promotion from the District level and only after at least five years as a federal level trial judge. That means an Appellate Justice has had ten years on the trial bench as preparation for the job. The same applies to SCOTUS. There should be no Associate Justice or Chief Justice that has not been in the courtroom for at least fifteen years. These are appointed and consented positions so for every one there is a long experience paper trail. The process for Advice and Consent can work off these requirements. In the Advice roll, Congress nominates a list of eligible candidates. Perhaps the House vets the candidates to the list. The Senate Consents to the President’s choice from the list provided for that level by the House. It may not filter out all of the rogues or malcontents but given a fifteen year career path through the ranks, there should be no surprises by the time a President appoints a SCOTUS candidate. Fifteen years is a long wait for someone in power to place a mole.

POTUS could remain in a four year fixed term. It could even be extended to eight given the common pattern since Washington. However, given that the role and function is reduced to limited and ceremonial powers, this is not where the power action would be. The ambitious ones would run for a Congressional seat and leave this job to elder statesmen, a “grampa” or “gramma” person rather than an authoritarian patriarchal “daddy” or “Father” figure. This would be no place for a King to operate from.

The current oversight committee structure has a membership apportioned by party percentage with a chairperson from the majority and a “ranking member” from the minority. This would probably restructure into the common Parliamentary structure of the Government made up of Ministers for the departments from the majority and a Shadow Government made up of the minority members. In essence, an oversight committee would split into its Government and Shadow Government halves. This has advantages. First, it would put an end to the speechifying and posturing that typically goes on in hearings instead of serious policy questions. Second, most parliaments have regularly scheduled Question Time where the Government can speechify and grandstand about whatever issues it wants to address and the opposition can do the same through loaded questions and bringing up its own issues. The Shadow Government, mirroring the structure and remits of the Government ministries monitors and questions the majority and presents the minority’s positions and policy proposals. The electorate gets a better idea of what each side really stands for because all parties have to make their cases policy by policy. The rest is details. We would be fortunate that while we’ve been struggling with making our system work for all this time, the parliaments, originally only one, have been hard at work evolving themselves too. We can learn from their efforts.

There is another result from such a restructuring. We only have to look at the current Trump Cabinet and compare it to the chairs and ranking members of the oversight committees. Trump has talk show hosts and sports promoters in cabinet posts. The Sec of State Rubio has the most experienced and he was only a one term Senator. The same can be said for the Senate and, especially, the House membership. Every member gets on some committee at least, unless they are Marjorie Taylor Greene. Since, in the end, there is little accountability or consequences for what they do they can continue to grandstand and act out and nothing happens. However, even in this dysfunctional situation, the GOP committee chairs are more experienced and competent thatt the department secretaries they oversee. The committee leadership, at least on the Democratic side, have not only multiple terms under their belt but they have worked their way up from the “back bench” to the “front bench” on those committees. AOC is both popular and competent but I’m not worried that she has not gotten a chair or ranking member chair yet. She is working her way up and will be in the leadership soon enough. Experience matters. Competence honed through experience matters. The parliamentary structure demands this. A party whose majority status depends on the actions of its leadership has little patience with clowns and bomb throwers. A party cannot afford it. Every parliament has its back bench cranks — and they usually stay there on the back bench. I cannot imagine the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene lasting very long in even a second tier party. Even with evil intent, a party has to limit its liabilities. MTG could be a party of one, Australia has one or two but a party of one is just a vanity party of one with no chance of power.

There may be two objections at this point. If we had the judiciary experience requirements this would mean that there may not be a Justice Thurgood Marshall. True, except for two things. First, Justice Marshall’s career path under those conditions could change. He didn’t have to dedicate all those years to being a civil rights trial attorney. He could have carried on by way of being a judge instead. Or, continuing as an attorney he could educate and convince the Courts just as effectively as when he was on the Court. Second, we would not get a Brett Kavanaugh or Clarence Thomas either.

The same applies to Obama or AOC or any other Progressive rising star. They would rise to the leadership anyway, just by a different path. Obama could have easily risen to be PM. So can AOC. Mike Johnson might given the disarray in the GOP but his government would have fallen long ago, sending him into the wilderness to keep Liz Truss company.

So here is my proposal. I have seen how our government has not been working for years and how it is taking a turn into a dark and foreboding future now. I have also seen how other countries, primarily other British colonies, have evolved their parliamentary systems of government. I am under no illusion that these governments are perfect or completely immune to corruption and subversion. But they don’t have the clowns and freak shows that we tolerate. True, a parliamentary government can also turn rogue as many will point out. But I do think their form works better and is less prone to the deficiencies and dangers we are experiencing. Any government can turn rogue when the electorate either wants it to or is too disconnected and uninvolved to prevent it. But I believe a parliamentary form sets a higher bar than what we have become accustomed to. As I see it right now, one of the aspects of what we currently have in the Constitution and in how we have evolved a government within it has, with time, turned its features into fatal bugs. Or has turned its bugs into fatal features.

We can do better.

In the end, we cannot go back to the status quo ante. The group of people of common interests that is represented by Trump has made this dangerous present in which we live possible and actual. That cannot be undone for the same reason we cannot undo the possibility of nuclear weapons. To stop what is going on and to prevent it from happening again requires change. Charles I broke his cane in a fit of anger and had to bend down to retrieve the broken tip by himself because no one else would do his command. That sealed his fate and the fate of absolute monarchy. We must force the same. How it is done is up to us — if we want to.

There will be another Trump — unless we remove the throne he is sitting on first.

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