Balancing the Powers, Balancing the Need for

Balancing the Powers, Balancing the Need for Gridlock The American system of government is the most fairly designed system of governance in the world today, designed to balance the three branches that make up the triangular structure of its government. The American system of government is designed not to work and remains in a state of hopeless and continual structural gridlock in a kind of 'rock, paper, scissors' style of governance that is amicable to a child's game but not to modern governance.

How can both of these statements be simultaneously true? The answer lies in the notion of the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers in the designed system of governance by the Founding Fathers of the American nation. The Father's system was designed to create, through division, a balance of powers between the branches of government most and least responsive to the popular will. "The system of checks and balances is an important part of the Constitution.

With checks and balances, each of the three branches of government can limit the powers of the others. This way, no one branch becomes too powerful. Each branch 'checks' the power of the other branches to make sure that the power is balanced between them." ("Checks and Balances." Fact Monster, 2003) The legislative branch is composed of the Senate and House of Representatives.

The Senate, until the 20th century, was appointed by the state legislature and remains the more reflective and limited body of governance in terms of its responsiveness, in contrast to the House, which has always been composed of directly elected representatives from designated, gerrymandered electoral districts. The Senate was supposed to be the more deliberative body of the two legislative bodies, because it was smaller and less responsive to electoral whims, as senators were elected every six years, rather than every two years like members of the House of Representatives.

Thus a structural balance between reasoned judgment of professional politicians and the populace was instituted early on in American ideology of balancing powers and checking the popular whims. However, the notion of professional politicians would have been largely anathema to the Founding Fathers, who hoped that individuals would serve for a time in governance, then return to their conventional occupations, preferably householders and farmers, as land ownership was a requirement in voting rights until the populist president Andrew Jackson's ascendancy to power.

The powers of the legislative assemblies were further checked and limited by the governance of the executive branch's authority, the branch composed of the president and his various secretaries. The Founding Fathers feared a reigning king in the form of the chief executive, and limited the executive's power not merely through the existence of the legislative branch, but by giving the legislature the ability to override the president's will and articulated desires, and also by according all unspecified powers to the states.

The judicial branch, the third branch of government is perhaps the most vaguely defined of all the branches.

Essentially, the Marshall Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, claimed a right to have a say over the laws of the land as well as the laws of the federal government, through the establishment of precedent, and "unlike a criminal court, the Supreme Court rules whether something is constitutional or unconstitutional -- whether or not it is permitted under the Constitution." Because "the judges are nominated by the President and approved by the Senate," and because "they have no term limits," they are further removed from the popular will, bound by law and the Constitution rather than immediate and immanent electoral needs, although whom the populace elects to the executive branch will often affect the Supreme Court's composition, depending on the ages of the justices, who serve for life.

"The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Its decisions are final, and no other court can overrule those decisions.

Decisions of the Supreme Court set precedents -- new ways of interpreting the law." ("Three Branches of Government." Fact Monster, 2003) Despite the intentions of the Founding Fathers to limit the influence of powerful factions upon governance, special interest groups reign in Washington, D.C., in the form of political action committees, because of the expense of political advertising that the founders of a nation of thirteen former colonies could never have conceived of.

Also despite the intentions of the Founding Fathers to create a balanced system, where gridlock was preferable to tyranny, the vastness of the American nation and the complexity of its social problems have often created a gridlocked system that is insufficiently elastic and responsive to changes. The greatest and most sweeping changes in American politics have occurred during times such as 1964 and 1980. In both situations, the president of the United States (Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, respectively) was elected by a clear majority of the population.

Also, the president's party dominated.