Eidelberg's proposal for an independent presidency

The Jewish political thinker Paul Eidelberg (see preceding post) does not seem to be widely known, in part presumably because in recent years he has concentrated his attention on the political problems facing Israel. This obscurity is unfortunate, because those problems are apparently to a great extent shared by the West as a whole—though in Israel their gravity is deepened by the existential external threat to which the country is permanently exposed, as well as (it turns out) by deficiencies specific to the Israeli political system. Much of what Eidelberg says is thus quite relevant to non-Jews, even if he is no longer addressing them. Eidelberg was a student of Leo Strauss, but seems to be an unusually original and independent political thinker in his own right. This intellectual background, at odds with academic orthodoxy, is doubtless another reason why his name is not more familiar.

In Jewish Statesmanship (2002?) Eidelberg argues that constitutional changes, far from being a self-indulgence of politicians or academics, would be essential to reverse Israel's course of political self-destruction. One necessary change would be to establish a much stronger executive than the one that results from a parliamentary (cabinet) system under proportional representation, with its gaggle of small competing political parties. In this connection, he devises an interesting procedure for choosing a president who is independent of the legislative branch, and thus able to provide coherent national leadership, rather than being pulled in different directions by legislative special interests to which he is beholden.

The founders of the American republic also recognized this need for an independent presidency; this is why they established an Electoral College, separate from the legislature, for choosing the President. The Founders intended the College to be an élite body making an independent and well-informed assessment of the merits of the candidates for the highest office of the republic. Unfortunately, under the two-party system, members of the College are in reality politically insignificant persons who are appointed on the understanding that they will vote for the pre-designated candidate of the party they represent. Thus the choice of President effectively boils down to a direct popular vote for the candidate of one or other of the two national political parties; these candidates are nowadays, in turn, also chosen by popular vote, in "primary" elections.

This method of choosing the American President does preserve the Founders' original plan of keeping the President politically independent of the legislature. Unfortunately, it does this at the expense of turning the presidential election into a direct popular contest. While the people may be reasonably well-qualified to judge whether an incumbent president is providing adequate leadership, they have little way of judging the merits of any other candidate for that position. To make this assessment, they are essentially dependent on the national news media; but the media strongly emphasize the superficial and act without much sense of political responsibility. They are also capable of demolishing the candidacy of anyone with whom they politically disagree, giving that candidate little chance to make arguments in his own defence before a national audience.

The direct popular choice of a President may prove especially dangerous in a time of national crisis, such as an economic breakdown, when ordinary people are so desperate for a remedy that they are willing to listen to any sufficiently well-funded charlatan who comes forward with radical proposals. Under such circumstances, the views of the news media might be ignored, or the media themselves, lacking as they are in political experience, responsibility, or deep knowledge, might jump onto the bandwagon of the would-be national savior. It seems all too easy to imagine this happening in the United States, for example, in the present condition of its political culture.

What Eidelberg offers is a way of combining the separation of legislative and executive power with the nomination of presidential candidates by legislators, who, unlike the people, are presumably capable of excluding incompetent candidates. Under Eidelberg's proposal, the president would be chosen by a direct popular vote, but ordinarily the presidential candidates would first have to be nominated by the upper house of the legislature (the senate). Eidelberg suggests that the senate should be limited to a maximum of three presidential nominees. In effect, at least under a two-party system, the party primary would then be replaced by nomination by the party's senators. This is somewhat similar to the traditional, though now largely defunct, Westminster arrangement, under which a party's candidate for Prime Minister was chosen by the party's MPs, rather than by the extraparliamentary party. (But Eidelberg seems to be envisioning a senate with a more élite character than the House of Commons.)

Now, the system as just described is not satisfactory, because it leaves the president dependent on his party in the senate for his re-election prospects: if he sufficiently offends the party, it will nominate someone else. The executive is therefore not independent of the legislative branch, and will be weak. (Alternatively, as in the Westminster constitution, the legislature might be turned into the tool of a strong executive. In any case, the legislature and executive are unhealthily fused.) However, Eidelberg points out that this problem can be solved simply by making the incumbent president automatically eligible for re-election. The presidential candidates will thus consist of the incumbent (until he resigns or is disqualified by term limits, if any), together with the senate's nominees. The incumbent relies for his re-election on maintaining popular support, not the support of the senate. The senate could make life difficult for the president by nominating a rival from within his own party, but Eidelberg sees this as a 'feature' rather than a 'bug': it would encourage the president to cooperate with the senate, without turning him merely into its instrument.

This proposal is the only way I have come across for preserving a separation of powers without relying on the dangerously incompetent simple direct election of the executive. It would probably also prove acceptable to the people. Ordinary voters wish to be able to participate in choosing the national leader from a short list of nominees, and especially to be able to give a verdict for or against the current leader; but for the most part they have little interest in participating in the nomination. Most American voters, for example, do not bother to participate in party primaries. Under the proposal, voters might be giving up a democratic right, but it would be one that most of them had never regarded as significant.