WI: Dual U.S. Presidency (Two Consuls instead of One President)

Maybe as the system evolves, we will see a Federalist consul and a Democratic-Republican consul

That could happen if the two were elected were elected simultaneously, but what I suspect is more likely is staggered electins so one or other of the consul/presidents is elected every 2 years. This would prevent (or at least mitigate) perpetual deadlock between the consuls. It’d also fufil what several above (mockingly?) suggested regarding :
No, you don’t need nine. You only need two, master and an apprentice.
How about a sensei and a young grasshopper?
Exactly, a senior Emperor and a junior Emperor a senior consul and a junior consul.

I also think that you could make it so the presidents couldn’t veto each other, and that while either could veto Congress, that those vetos could be overridden easier if the other consul agreed with congress. Just ideas.
 
Perhaps one consul is in charge of the House and the other the Senate. Considering that the Roman Consul was roughly analogous to the “Prime Minister” of the Senate, perhaps Consul could just be the neoclassical name for Speakers of both Houses
 
Whether a plural executive modeled on, say, Pennsylvania's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Executive_Council_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Pennsylvania is possible is a different question from whether a two-man consulate is possible. I don't think anyone advocated the latter.

Interesting. It sounds rather like a US where the Senate exercised the executive power, as that Council was so big as to almost amount to a mini-Senate.

While the Convention never went that far, I note from Rossiter that as late as two weeks before its final adjournment, the Senate still had sole power to appoint judges and ambassadors, which power was transferred to the President at the eleventh hour. Can't help wondering whether that change would have been made had the members not had a mental image of Washington whenever they heard the word "President". W/o Washington could the US have ended up with a President whose functions were mainly ceremonial, and a Senate which actually chose most of the important officials, rather than merely confirming his choices?
 
Interesting. It sounds rather like a US where the Senate exercised the executive power, as that Council was so big as to almost amount to a mini-Senate.

While the Convention never went that far, I note from Rossiter that as late as two weeks before its final adjournment, the Senate still had sole power to appoint judges and ambassadors, which power was transferred to the President at the eleventh hour. Can't help wondering whether that change would have been made had the members not had a mental image of Washington whenever they heard the word "President". W/o Washington could the US have ended up with a President whose functions were mainly ceremonial, and a Senate which actually chose most of the important officials, rather than merely confirming his choices?
So parliament then ;)
 
If in this ATL the US had followed Calhoun
& by the 1850's one President was always a
northerner & the other always a southerner
than it is possible the ACW would have been
butterflied away(the South would have felt
that under such an arrangement it would have been very difficult if not downright im-
possible for the executive and/or legislature
to put through abolition. Thus they might
have felt secceding to protect slavery would
not be necessary). (Of course the price of
avoiding the war is the prolongation of
slavery).


But this points out the big problem with a dual presidency: it's a receipe for govern-
mental paralaysis. One Thomas Jefferson had some interesting thoughts on this matter. Originally he had favored a plural
executive but he changed his mind. If
the cabinet he served in had been a dual
presidency, Jefferson later observed, the
rivalary between himself & Hamilton "would
have balanced each other & produced a state
of absolute inaction." But Washington would
listen to the two of them & then act, furnish-
ing the "regulating power which would keep
the machine in steady movement." (Jefferson added that history shows "as many examples of a single usurper arising out of
a government by a plurality, as of temporary
trusts of power in a single hand rendered
permanent by usurpation.") Quoted in Arthur
M Schlesinger, Jr, THE IMPERIAL PRESID-
ENCY, 1973, p. 365 in the Popular Library
(paperback)edition.
 
Last edited:
Autocorrect isn't nice

Can confirm, it fucking sucks. It'd be one thing if it just switched words it didn't recognize to ones it did, but it always seems to insist that whatever normal word you were typing was supposed to be some other word that makes no sense in context.
 
So parliament then ;)

Kind of, though I can see problems as more states are admitted and the Senate gets larger.

At some point they may have to organise some kind of "inner cabinet" (of Committee Chairmen?) to administer the country day to day. That, incidentally, would create a system very much like the actual one in present-day Switzerland.
 
Last edited:
Just adding onto this thread, simply having the consuls in question be separated by function could potentially ease some of the.... "coordination" issues so to speak.

A Consul of Diplomacy handling foreign affairs and functioning as a head diplomat of sorts. Appoints ambassadors, makes and proposes treaties from foreign powers to congress, etc. Probably elected by the senate and serves a 6 year term.

A Consul of Governance handling domestic affairs. Probably has the veto and appoints cabinet members, plus enforces the laws. Elected by the house and serves a 2 year term.

A Consul of War functions as a sort of commander in chief/marshal of the armed forces. Chosen via sortition from the top generals of the armed forces or the like. Maybe this one could be bundled into the first(CoS)

A Consul of Law Who will basically be the chief justice of the supreme court except probably chosen via sortition from either already existing members of the supreme court, who themselves are chosen some other way, or chosen again from Sotition but from eligible candidates within the judiciary. That or they can be chosen by both houses of congress.

Basically overall more or less like some type of weird american style semi-presidential system. Keep the cool names but turn it into a more workable system rather than the mess that the ancients had up and running.
 
Just adding onto this thread, simply having the consuls in question be separated by function could potentially ease some of the.... "coordination" issues so to speak.

A Consul of Diplomacy handling foreign affairs and functioning as a head diplomat of sorts. Appoints ambassadors, makes and proposes treaties from foreign powers to congress, etc. Probably elected by the senate and serves a 6 year term.

A Consul of Governance handling domestic affairs. Probably has the veto and appoints cabinet members, plus enforces the laws. Elected by the house and serves a 2 year term.

A Consul of War functions as a sort of commander in chief/marshal of the armed forces. Chosen via sortition from the top generals of the armed forces or the like. Maybe this one could be bundled into the first(CoS)

A Consul of Law Who will basically be the chief justice of the supreme court except probably chosen via sortition from either already existing members of the supreme court, who themselves are chosen some other way, or chosen again from Sotition but from eligible candidates within the judiciary. That or they can be chosen by both houses of congress.

Basically overall more or less like some type of weird american style semi-presidential system. Keep the cool names but turn it into a more workable system rather than the mess that the ancients had up and running.

The Articles regime already had something like this; basically the legislature can do anything, with enough votes, and the means of executing its will is to appoint someone "secretary" (the title actually used) who would be on paper the subordinate servant of a legislature committee and hence the legislature as a whole. I don't see why any of them need term limits or defined terms; they just serve at the pleasure of the legislature and so whenever there is a big political shift they are liable to be replaced, but depending on the office, some might carry over. The Postmaster General might serve for decades!

You seem to have sorted out the categories pretty well too, though in addition to these big Consuls there might be little offices (Postmaster for instance) thought up ad hoc. There might be a tendency for some housecleaning every now and then so that arbitrary placement of offices created as the legislature goes along get attached to others, and perhaps subordinated according to a logical hierarchy. The Consul of Governance might wind up master of a huge bureaucracy--but it might not happen that way; perhaps instead of attaching this that and the other office to the CoG where it "belongs" by OTL reasoning, perhaps the offices are each direct creations of Congress each with their own appointed head under direct congressional control, and each one gets their own budget and legally mandated scope of operations. Obviously there would be some danger of interference due to overlapping functions but isn't the same true of different branches of a single executive?

I could visualize a modern Federal government in which there are hundreds of offices each headed by a "Consul" or "Secretary" serving at the pleasure of the Congress, with no one set to consolidate all executive power into one single "buck stops here" structure.
 
Top