The US with a separate Head of State and Head of Government

Well, I think it's a given that it would either be a system where one of the two has all the power or a system where the power is split between the two. I think our founders would have favored the latter, but if the system was adapted later, like in the (quite plausible) Whig idea, the speaker of the house would probably have all the power.

I suppose the most likely scenario that doesn't start with the two heads being separate would involve congress passing a bill saying the president could only appoint secretaries that were first vetted by congress. The president would veto the bill, and congress would pass with a two thirds vote to override the veto. However, none of the people in congress would become the "Head of Government" unless one of the houses is more powerful than the other to begin with, in which case the head of that house becomes the head of government.

If it works this way, The president would still hold the veto power, but the cabinet would work for the head of congress. It would be different from a parliamentary system in that the people in the cabinet will not be members of congress.

Actually in quite a few parliamentary systems, members of the Cabinet aren't members of Parliament. They renounce their seats once appointed to an executive position.
 
That's nice. Which countries do that? And do those countries always appoint people from Parliament to fill the roles?
 
Actually, this might be fairly easy if we can allow the system time to evolve. Let's say that Washington's health goes into serious decline once he becomes president. The president knows, close aides know, and a few members of Congress know, but no one wants it to become public knowledge. Thus, in this timeline, one of the first executive departments Congress creates, and President Washingron supports, is a Department of State, distinct from that of foreign affairs, which is intended to coordinate and keep organized the functions and activities of the executive branch. The first Secretary of State is Alexander Hamilton (someone else goes to Treasury ITTL), and he is ale to develop the position to be like that of a Prime Minister.

Overtime, the position develops into the main power center of the executive branch, and is generally held by a Member of Congress who gives up his seat in order to take on the Secretariat.
 
I think Adams would be a strong contender. However, if it isn't Hamilton, just imagine how angry Adams would be.
 
And isn't it logical for the VP to be the person filling in for the president? Come to think of it, this sort of secretary of state only makes sense if there isn't a VP.
 
Actually that makes sense, in the TL you're describing it seems more likely that the VP is given more powers, rather than the a new Secretariat.

The general idea could still work though, as long as Adams becomes enough of a force in the Vice Presidency to actually establish precedent that holds up, or becomes a law.
 
And isn't it logical for the VP to be the person filling in for the president? Come to think of it, this sort of secretary of state only makes sense if there isn't a VP.

How so? The presidency is retaining some important authority distinct from the Secretariat, and the separate positions prevents power concentrations. Also, in my scenario, the position develops after the vice presidency has been created and given certain albeit limited responsibilities under the Constitution.

Actually that makes sense, in the TL you're describing it seems more likely that the VP is given more powers, rather than the a new Secretariat.

The general idea could still work though, as long as Adams becomes enough of a force in the Vice Presidency to actually establish precedent that holds up, or becomes a law.

Why? The Vice President is symbolically President of the Senate, and, before the twelth amendment, potentially a rival to the president. Separation of Powers doctrine would preclude the VP from leading an executive department anyway. This is exacrly why the idea Kerry entertained in 2004 of McCain being his running mate and SecDef would not have been acceotable, and partly why he rightly abandoned the idea. One suspects that if he could have, G.W. Bush would have had Cheney at both the Pentagon and the Naval observatory.


I understand Adams was competent, but unpopular. I'm not sure how it would have turned out.

That was later.
 

Thande

Donor
Suggestion based off a related idea I had: in the early days of the US, there was no convention on how states nominated their electors for the presidential electoral college. From the first election in 1788 up to about 1830, states vacillated back and forth between direct popular election, appointment by the state legislature, or a mixture of the two. Some states such as Massachusetts used the constitutional logic that a state has 2 electoral votes for its 2 senators - which should be determined by the state legislature, as the senators were at the time, and the other electoral votes should be determined by popular vote. Never mind the fact that some states assigned their electoral votes by congressional district, as Maine and Nebraska do now; Maryland did this for a long time.

In OTL, all the states except South Carolina gradually coalesced around popular election at the time when Jacksonian Democracy was taking hold--South Carolina kept not holding a presidential vote right up until the Civil War and this was only changed by Reconstruction. But what if the states instead all gradually agreed on the legislature-appointed electors model and this became the convention? Fine until democratic ideas become more prominent and people start objecting to this, which would allow Jacksonian-style ideology to alloy with Whig-type ideas about congressional supremacy rather than the two being opposed. One reform could be to make the president popularly elected, but alternatively you could keep him as a state-appointed office and just strip him of his powers to redress the balance instead, and give them to the Speaker and other elected congressional offices.

This seems like a possible way for the US to become an Irish-style "president mostly a figurehead except for a few things" system.
 
No, Adams wouldn't be a secretary. But due the very fact that there already exists someone whose main job it is to do the president's job when the president can't, it isn't plausible that Washington would appoint a secretary to do it.
 
No, Adams wouldn't be a secretary. But due the very fact that there already exists someone whose main job it is to do the president's job when the president can't, it isn't plausible that Washington would appoint a secretary to do it.

The VP steps up for the President in case of permanent disability or death. Washington here is not dead, and is well enough to give instructions, but not well enough to govern himself directly. If we let Adams do it, then the tradition dies, and the point of the OP is defeated.
 
Suggestion based off a related idea I had: in the early days of the US, there was no convention on how states nominated their electors for the presidential electoral college. From the first election in 1788 up to about 1830, states vacillated back and forth between direct popular election, appointment by the state legislature, or a mixture of the two. Some states such as Massachusetts used the constitutional logic that a state has 2 electoral votes for its 2 senators - which should be determined by the state legislature, as the senators were at the time, and the other electoral votes should be determined by popular vote. Never mind the fact that some states assigned their electoral votes by congressional district, as Maine and Nebraska do now; Maryland did this for a long time.

In OTL, all the states except South Carolina gradually coalesced around popular election at the time when Jacksonian Democracy was taking hold--South Carolina kept not holding a presidential vote right up until the Civil War and this was only changed by Reconstruction. But what if the states instead all gradually agreed on the legislature-appointed electors model and this became the convention? Fine until democratic ideas become more prominent and people start objecting to this, which would allow Jacksonian-style ideology to alloy with Whig-type ideas about congressional supremacy rather than the two being opposed. One reform could be to make the president popularly elected, but alternatively you could keep him as a state-appointed office and just strip him of his powers to redress the balance instead, and give them to the Speaker and other elected congressional offices.

This seems like a possible way for the US to become an Irish-style "president mostly a figurehead except for a few things" system.

I'm not clear that this sequence of events really follows, and even so, doesn't Ireland's parliament have a speaker figure anyway, like in Westminister systems with a distinct head of government, in the case of Ireland the Taoiseach?
 
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My current timeline, A Strange America, deals with this. In the wake of Washington's death just before the end of the war, the country's politicians are even more concerned about the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation, and fear for the survival of a united Thirteen Colonies. Hamilton and his supporters fill much of the power vacuum Washington leaves behind, and sells the monarchy to the Constitutional Convention as a means to check the executive power of the President by dividing it somewhat.

Running the risk of sounding like a pretentious douchenozzle, I shall quote myself:

Unlike the King, who ruled until death, the President had a 5-year term. The monarch’s power was indirect, as Head of State and Chief Diplomat, given powers to appoint and dismiss ambassadors and the Federal Cabinet (with advice and consent from the President), as well as a royal veto to check the President’s. The first King would be elected with the President, and could be impeached in the same way. A Succession Council made up of the King, the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the Speaker of the House, would convene every 5 years to choose an heir from the King’s family. The monarch could hold no public office nor lead a private business to avoid corruption, and the Succession Council was encouraged to choose a successor based primarily on merit. The American monarch was conceived as an embodiment of the national spirit, given authority not by divine right but by the will of the governed.
 
My current timeline, A Strange America, deals with this. In the wake of Washington's death just before the end of the war, the country's politicians are even more concerned about the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation, and fear for the survival of a united Thirteen Colonies. Hamilton and his supporters fill much of the power vacuum Washington leaves behind, and sells the monarchy to the Constitutional Convention as a means to check the executive power of the President by dividing it somewhat.

Running the risk of sounding like a pretentious douchenozzle, I shall quote myself:

With due respect, it's just not plausible that the Convention would openly opt for a monarchy, regardless of how checked it was alleged to be.
 
I think that if you change it so the king could be any citizen of merit, regardless of family, it would be plausible. There have been elected kings in the past, and the senate considered calling the president the king.
 
I think that if you change it so the king could be any citizen of merit, regardless of family, it would be plausible. There have been elected kings in the past, and the senate considered calling the president the king.

It's (borderline) ASB for the Constitutional convention, which is before my POD anyway, to establish a monarchy, however nominal it may be.
 
Then the Chief Magistrate. Chief Magistrate and King were both OTL titles that the Senate considered when deciding what to call the president.
 
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