The E.U. on Hungary: Beyond Symbolic Measures

Any federal system of government must function fundamentally as a unit even though the states are semi-sovereign, as is the federal level. The Nullification Crisis in the U.S. during the nineteenth century highlighted the plight a federal union would face were state governments able to ignore federal law unilaterally. Fortunately, President Jackson was able to get South Carolina to stand down on this point. In 2024, the E.U.'s federal officials were having trouble getting the state of Hungary not only to apply a federal directive within the state, but also to stop contradicting the E.U.'s foreign policy against Putin's Russia in Ukraine by engaging in diplomatic trips of appeasement. A federal system that lacks the means procedurally or substantively to protect federal prerogatives against the contradictory actions of wayward states is not viable in the long term.

Every E.U. state government is bound by Article 24.3 of the E.U.’s basic law, which mandates that those governments must support the union’s foreign policy “actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.”[1] It is not often that a E.U. official mentions the obligation of loyalty in reference to the states toward the union, but the normative glue should not be ignored or even trivialized, especially given the preponderance of residual sovereignty that the state governments enjoy in the E.U.’s federal system. Josep Borell, the E.U.’s foreign minister, was referring to Viktor Orbán of the state of Hungary, whose “peace mission” to Moscow and Beijing coincided with the state of Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the E.U. in early July, 2024. “Any so-called ‘peace mission’ that ignores” that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine “is, at the end of the day, only benefitting Putin and will not bring peace.”[2] Borell was referring back to Orbán’s previous characterization of the union’s supplies of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine as a “pro-war policy.”[3] “The only one who’s pro-war is Putin,” Borell stated.[4] Referring to Orbán’s statement as belonging “to the realm of a lack of loyal cooperation,” Borell said, “We have to send a signal, even if it’s a symbolic signal, that being against the foreign policy of the European Union and disqualifying the policy of the European Union as the ‘party of war’ has to have consequences.”[5] The informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the states, known as Gymnich, would take place in Brussels rather than in Hungary’s state capital, Budapest. This move is indeed symbolic, for the official meetings are not subject to the 6-month rotating presidencies of the states.

The question is thus whether Borell’s use of the symbolic was sufficient to enforce Article 24.3 on the loyalty that the state governments owe to the union with respect to its foreign policy. I submit that a symbolic gesture, at best a “slap on the wrist,” is not sufficient to forestall undercutting moves by the governors of the state governments, for the political interests of the latter may differ from that of the union as a whole, and symbol is no match for real politic.

As Borell himself admitted, Orbán’s continued veto of military assistance for Ukraine was ongoing, and it was totally legal under E.U. basic law. Moving an informal meeting to Brussels would not change Orbán’s use of his state’s veto in the European Council. Nor would the states sending lower-level civil servants to an informal meeting of state interior/justice officials in Budapest. Arnoldas Abramavicius, Lithuania’s Deputy Minister of the Interior, refused to call sending lower level politicians a boycott; he would not even state that Orbán’s diplomatic trips to Moscow and Beijing violate the E.U. foreign policy against Russia. “I think this is a reaction towards Hungary’s external activity maybe sometimes not adjusted to the European framework,” he said at the meeting.[6] The diplomatic trips designed to negotiate with an aggressor with whom the E.U. would not negotiate is worse than merely not being coordinated or adjusted with the federal policy, which, by the way, is not a framework.

In fact, Borell undercut his argument and the E.U. itself by how he put the matter of the states’ foreign policy power. “Each member state is sovereign on its foreign policy—true. But as far as they’re members of this club, they have to obey the treaties.”[7] Given Article 24.3, however, each state’s foreign policy was not sovereign, for it could not contradict the union’s foreign policy. Moreover, the E.U. itself was not a club even as of 2024. The European Court of Justice had repeatedly ruled that federal laws, regulations, and directives are binding on the states, and the ECJ’s decisions are binding on the state courts as well as the state governments. Furthermore, clubs do not have a directly elected legislature such as the European Parliament, and, moreover, all three branches of government. Given the preponderance of governmental sovereignty residing with the states in 2024, the E.U. could ill afford being rhetorically diminished by one of its own officials, especially in the midst of a struggle between the union and a sitting governor.

A letter signed by over 63 state lawmakers addressed to the top three E.U. officials insists that Hungary’s Orbán had “caused significant damage” by his two diplomatic trips, so it was not merely a matter of not being adjusted to the E.U.’s foreign policy in which Putin is squarely the aggressor in the war.[8] Appropriately, the state officials called on the union “to suspend Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council” because “mere verbal condemnation” of the wayward state government has “no effect.”[9] Nor does merely moving the location of an informal meeting and sending lower-level officials.

That the European Council had not already suspended Hungary’s voting rights not only due to Orbán’s efforts to appease (Von der Leyen’s word) Putin but also the European Court of Justice’s ruling that Hungary had refused to implement a federal directive suggests that the union is vulnerable to defections by state governments with all but symbolic impunity. To apply anything close to unanimity for the voting rights of a state in the European Council to be stripped is itself not only foolhardy, but undercutting as well. An amendment applying qualified majority voting to sanctioning a violating state in the European Council would improve the coherence and functioning of the union at the federal level in line with the rule of law, while a state government deprived of its voting rights could still appeal to the European Court of Justice concerning the fairness of the mechanism and how it is being applied.

It bears noting that the Titanic could not avoid the iceberg in part because the ship’s rudder was too small, given the size of the ship. Or, if an analogy of several ships is preferred, a line spoken by a European in the film, The Godfather, Part III, applies: “Our ships must all sail in the same direction.” For one ship to sail not only apart from the others, but then into them must surely not be permitted. Appeasing or even just negotiating separately with Putin while referring to the E.U. foreign policy as pro-war even while vetoing military assistance to Ukraine should have been met with more than a symbolic response by E.U. federal officials, and the fact that it was not is an indication that the federal system contains a significant vulnerability, or weakness, that should be redressed especially before additional states are permitted to join the union.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrell Accuses Orbán of Disloyalty and Joins Boycott Against Hungary’s E.U. Presidency,” Euronews, July 22, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Caitlin Danaher, “E.U. Moves High-Level Meetings Out of Budapest to Protest Orbán’s Ukraine War Stance,” CNN, July 22, 2024.
7. Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrell Accuses Orbán of Disloyalty and Joins Boycott Against Hungary’s E.U. Presidency,” Euronews, July 22, 2024.
8. Caitlin Danaher, “E.U. Moves High-Level Meetings Out of Budapest to Protest Orbán’s Ukraine War Stance,” CNN, July 22, 2024.
9. Ibid.

Differentiating the European Council and Parliament: Meloni of Italy

At the federal level of the E.U., the European Council, like the Senate in the U.S., represents the states, whereas the European Parliament, like the U.S. House of Representatives, represents citizens—that’s right, E.U. citizens. The theory behind this difference is a modification of traditional federalism theory, wherein only the polities in a federation are represented at the federal level. In this traditional way of doing federalism, individuals, or citizens, belong only to the first level of political organization. Althusius’s Political Digest (1603) describes that theory, borrowing a lot from the example of the Holy Roman Empire. The advent of both polities and federal citizens being directly represented at a federal level was born out of compromise during the American Constitutional Convention in 1787. The E.U. replicated the structure, wherein the state governments and E.U. citizens (or legal residents) each have their own channel of access to affect federal law and policy on the federal level. For one of the two to cross over and eclipse the other in its own channel is suboptimal because both vantage points contribute to sound federal law in a way that enables them to protect their respective interests, which are not identical. It is thus not appropriate for a state government, including its governor or head of state, to direct members of Parliament how to vote on a given bill, whether their districts are within or outside of the state.

On July 18, 2024, Giorgia Meloni, the governor of the E.U. state of Italy, “ordered the 24 MEPs,” or members of Parliament of her state-level Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy, group “to vote against the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission.”[1] I contend that those representatives were instead duty-bound to vote the interests of their respective voters rather than serve as an additional resource for the state government at the federal level, or else to vote along with the rest of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party in the Parliament, rather than as a state group representing the state’s government. This is admittedly a different perspective than that which both American and European media outlets have intentionally or unintentionally absorbed from the Euroskeptic ideology wherein the European Parliament is really even a legislative body and thus does not have its own parties (and interests).

From an American perspective, it would be like the governor of a state ordering representatives of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote a certain way, rather than in line with the wishes or interests of the constituents in the respective districts or the federal-level party recognized by the U.S. House.  The U.S. Senate is where the state governments are to exercise their authority at the federal level even though this line is more direct in the European Council because the heads of the state governments themselves sit in that chamber, rather than separately elected senators. Indeed, Meloni already had her chance to vote against Von der Leyen’s nomination in the European Council—Meloni abstained. For her to order members of Parliament to vote against the nominee essentially doubled Meloni’s, and thus her state government’s, role at the federal level. Not only is this excessive; it also eclipses the voice of the E.U. citizens in the districts of the MEPs who followed Meloni’s order. That is to say, the order upset the balance of inputs—that of the states and the E.U. citizens—feeding into the federal level.

Given the staying power of the principle of unanimity at the federal level as of 2024, the power of the state governments at the federal level was arguably too much anyway for the viability of the E.U.’s functioning at the federal level. Eclipsing the voice of the people by attempting to subordinate their directly elected representatives (even though by party) worsens the imbalance.

In his text, Federal Government, Kenneth Wheare describes a federal system as wheels within a wheel. All of those should be in balance for the system as a whole to function well. I disagree strongly with his claim that a balance of powers between the states and the federal institutions is not necessary. He claims that the state governments need only have one domain of authority that is autonomous of the federal government for the federal system to be viable, but such an imbalance would be tantamount to political consolidation rather than dual-sovereignty, wherein the states are not eclipsed by federal preemption and power. After nearly 250 years, the U.S. federal system was arguably much closer to consolidation than in that union’s first 50 years. After 30 years, the E.U. suffered from the opposite danger: too much state power, and thus a risk of dissolution. Although strong institutional safeguards to prevent eventual consolidation at the expense of viable federalism were advisable in the E.U., given the historical trajectory of the U.S. towards consolidation in an empire in which one size does not fit all, given the different cultures therein, too much of a role for the state governments at the federal level was itself a danger for the E.U. in 2024. The staying power of the principle of unanimity alone threatened to excessively encumber E.U. policy-making and law, and thus fuel Euroskeptic movements toward the dissolution of the union (which is neither a bloc nor an international organization). Furthermore, eclipsing the sacred relationship between the representatives in the Parliament and their respective constituencies, E.U. citizens, worsens the “democracy deficit.” Just as the U.S. House was originally intended as the democratic body at the federal level in the U.S., as U.S. senators were initially chosen by their respective state governments and the president by the Electoral College, the European Parliament can be seen as the sole repository of democracy in the European Union. A look at how the Commission’s president is nominated and elected without E.U. citizens voting on the question and the fact that the European Council represents the state governments rather than their respective peoples directly demonstrate the importance of the Parliament in terms of direct representative democracy at the federal level.

In short, the E.U. state governments should keep their paws off the European Parliament; the European Council and the Council of the E.U. is where state-level officials can affect federal policy and law at the federal level. If anything, the authority of the Parliament should have been strengthened in 2024 relative to the powers of the Commission and especially the European Council (and the Council of the E.U.). At the very least, all of the political groups in the Parliament should have been recognized at the federal level as political parties in themselves rather than as informal groups of state-level parties. In 2024, the drastic imbalance in the federal system in favor of the state governments, whose individual and collective interests are in theory and practice different than that of the E.U. both as a federal system and in terms of federal policy and law, was a major problem that did not need to be worsened by encroachments. From a federal perspective, the governor of the E.U. state of Italy was coloring outside the lines in seeking more influence at the federal level. Objecting to this does not suggest in the least that protections for the state governments against possible federal encroachment, as has happened in the U.S., should be disabled or torn down.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Analysis: Giorgia Meloni’s Façade as a Pragmatic E.U. Leader Has Suddenly Crumbled,” Euronews, July 19, 2024.

Journalism Goes Only So Far in Empire-Scale Democracy

A news story only goes so far; only so much “digging” is possible against a pressing deadline. Moreover, we humans are not particularly good at “connecting the dots” when they are far afield. Through natural selection in an environment in which humans were prey as well as hunters, we are still “hard-wired” to privilege the immediate. So it takes more than a bit of effort to counter this natural predilection in order to make a truly informed judgment that takes into account the relevant tributaries. One such judgment concerns the impact of U.S. President Joe Biden’s age on his fitness to serve a second term.

I submit that after the presidential debate in June, 2024, the American media did not adequately distinguish the issue being how fit the president would be in the future, during a second term, from how he was at the time of the debate (and whether the issue was episodic or of a continuing and gradually worsening condition—the White House had a vested interest in promoting the former over the latter). Even in this respect, the human orientation to the immediate is evident. How the president did a few well-orchestrated appearances in the wake of the debate is relevant if the issue were episodic—one of a bad performance—and the press by in large accepted this paradigm at the expense of asking how the president would be in two or three years—the second term not beginning for six months! Whether the president would be fit in terms of old-age to serve a second term is also not the same as whether he could win the election, yet the media was satisfied to let the latter be the pivotal issue given the political interests of Democrats running for office. The issue concerning the president’s age was how he would be in two or three years, not whether he should immediately resign or whether he could win the election. Both in focusing on particular “performances” and on the political question of whether Biden could win the election, the media was enabling rather than countering the common propensity to privilege the immediacy over the eventual. This orientation to furnishing information to the voters is not conducive to good electoral judgment by any electorate.

Taking the issue to be the president’s likely future fitness to serve a second term, Americans’ horizon could have been deepened in at least two respects. That is, Americans could go beyond their media to consider two additional things.

First, with President Biden down with the “covid” virus, rather than looking for immediate symptoms, people could have recalled that Queen Elizabeth survived the illness itself only to die a year or so after it. After she had recovered from the illness itself, she admitted to two visitors that it had been bad, so it is reasonable to suppose that her death a year or so later came as a result. Given the long-term impact of the virus on organs such as the heart, it is possible that for the elderly who survive the onset of the virus, the life-threatening aspect may kick in a year or two later from a weakened heart muscle. If so, the implications for Biden being able to serve a complete second term should not be ignored or passed over in favor of looking for immediate symptoms. It bears remembering that President Wilson was severely impacted by at least one stroke during his second term, and the White House kept this from the American people. In 2024 just after the June debate, even members of the political elite were angry because Biden’s handlers had kept even just his decline a secret. Perhaps a few news stories on Wilson’s second term could have nudged the electorate in considering what Biden’s handlers might do during a second term.

Second, even in the midst of public discourse on President Biden’s health and age, the media, with the exception of one article by The Washington Post, did not mention that he had had two brain operations for aneurysms in 1988. Although he fully recovered, how or whether the surgeries themselves or the aneurysms could have a negative impact his elderly brain was worth asking following the debate. In short, rather than merely looking at the president’s immediate health, a longer, longitudinal perspective would have been useful, especially as the issue was the impact of old-age on the president’s brain in particular and the surgery had been on his brain.

As to why the media did not include these considerations, the focus on the immediate that is engrained in human nature served not only journalists under pressure to put out a story before a deadline, but also politicians whose political survival instinct to be elected (or re-elected). Whether President Biden could win came to include whether he would take the U.S. House down with him—meaning that the legislative chamber would continue to have a Republican majority. Subjecting Biden’s immediate covid symptoms to coverage and juxtapositioning his slightly increased lethargy with a triumphant Trump at the Republican Convention fit that narrative and the buttressing political interests of the moment. In contrast, whether the covid virus could leave its mark on the president not immediately, but in a year or two, such that he might be more likely to die in his second term did not fit and was thus ignored by journalists and the political elite alike. Whether from collusion or coincident interests, the impact was the same. Up against the human tendency to privilege the immediate and political interests hinging on the 2024 election, the question of whether the president could viably serve a full second term quietly dissipated. Did anyone notice?  I doubt it; the shift was so subtle, and of course in line with our human, all too human propensity to focus on the more immediate.

For the profound thinkers on democracy, a few broader tasks can be suggested to ponder. First, given the human propensity to focus on the immediate, do journalists and media companies have a responsibility to compensate by emphasizing longer-term factors that are relevant to an electorate’s judgment in an upcoming election? If so, should such responsibility be waived if viewers (or readers) simply do not want the less titillating material to be included in the news stories? Against pressure from advertisers, any such responsibility would likely be quickly flailed against the nearest wall without any hindrance from conscience. Second, like the six-year term of U.S. Senators, are there any other structural elements that could be added to the U.S. political system that would counter the hegemony of immediacy in preference to the long-term? Rather than extending the terms of senators even more, or extending the terms of any other elected representative at the federal level, how can the electoral process or system be altered in ways that provide more space for long-term considerations by an electorate? It may be that instituting maximum and not just minimum age qualifications would help, but such a quick fix ought not to relegate the value in analyzing systemic elements of the electoral and governmental systems in terms of whether they lean us toward the immediate. If so, could structural reforms be “invented” that tilt either or both systems to favor medium- and long-term considerations? That the U.S. debt had by 2024 increased to an astronomical figure of nearly $35 trillion—perhaps already a de facto default—suggests that the systems were aligned in favor of the human propensity to emphasize instant gratification over the long-term viability of a republic (or a republic of republics, as in the cases of the U.S. and E.U.).

On the European Commission Boycotting Hungary’s Presidency of the Council of the E.U.

Whereas just one presidency applies to the U.S. at the federal level, the E.U. has several. There is a president of the European Commission, a president of the European Parliament, a president of the European Council, and a president of the Council of the E.U., the latter being held by a state government on a six-month rotating basis. On July 1, 2024, the E.U. state of Hungary assumed that role. Because that state’s government had recently been found guilty by the E.U.’s top court, the E.C.J., of blocking federal law within the state, the matter of Hungary taking its turn in chairing the Council of the E.U. was controversial at the time. Because Viktor Orbán, governor of Hungary, used the insignia of the presidency of the Council in making unauthorized diplomatic trips to Russia and China on the war in Ukraine, the European Commission, the E.U. government’s executive branch, took the unusual decision to boycott Hungary’s presidency. Shortly thereafter, the E.U.'s parliament followed suit with a resolution condemning Orbán's diplomatic trip to Moscow. I contend that Orbán’s foray into diplomatic relations even as he was taking on a major role at the federal level presents good evidence for why foreign policy should be federalized in the E.U. as it has been in the U.S., and for the same reason.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates felt the need to delegate foreign policy and diplomacy to the proposed federal executive branch out of concern that the states would be used, and torn apart from one another, by foreign states pursuing their interests at America’s expense. It went without saying that a state-level official could not represent the union abroad. Besides not being able to speak for the other states and the union itself, a governor conducting foreign policy both for the union and one’s own state would have to contend with a conflict of interest where the interests of the union diverge from that of the official’s state. All of these problems were obviated by having the states delegate foreign policy to the federal level with the states still retaining residual sovereignty. It bears stating that the thirteen states that exited the British Empire in 1776 were sovereign states until they delegated some of their respective sovereignty to the federal level of the union in 1789.

In 2024, in the midst of Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine, the federal level of the E.U. was involved in foreign policy, and yet a governor of any state government could also take on a role in foreign policy as that was a shared competency (i.e., both federal and state levels). That the governor of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, used the official logo of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the E.U. in his “peace mission” to Russia and China days after he had assumed the presidency for Hungary signaled or implied a federal foreign-policy role was troubling enough. That he publicly stated, “China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace since the beginning” of the war even though the E.U. had dismissed the “Chinese peace plan” for “making a selective interpretation of international law and blurring the line between the aggressor and the aggressed” was too much for the E.U.’s executive branch.[1] That Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a person wanted by the ICC for war crimes against civilians in Ukraine, to “start a dialogue on the shortest road to peace” just days before Russia bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv was also not missed by the Commission.[2]

As a result, the European Commission decided to boycott Hungary’s six-month presidency of the E.U. Council. In addition to going to Moscow and Beijing on peace missions, that Orbán had stated that he would use Hungary’s chairing of the Council to sideline the accession talks so to postpone statehood for Ukraine was likely another factor in the boycott. “In light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian Presidency, the President (Ursula von der Leyen) has decided that the European Commission will be represented at senior civil servant level only during informal meetings of the Council,” according to a spokesperson for the Commission.[3] The College visit to the Presidency also would not take place. 

Days after the Commission's boycott, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Orbán's diplomatic visit to Moscow. The resolution itself "stresses that during this visit, he did not represent the E.U., and considers the visit to be a blatant violation of the E.U.'s treaties and common foreign policy, including the principle of sincere cooperation; [and] underlines that the Hungarian Prime Minister cannot claim to represent the E.U. when violating common E.U. [foreign policy] positions."[4] That the governor of a state violated federal foreign policy in going abroad while president of a federal institution and two other federal institutions officially objected points to the serious need for E.U. reform concerning foreign policy in terms of the federal system. In other words, the federal system itself contained a fundamental problem in need of a solution.  

Essentially, Orbán was leveraging his temporary presidency of a federal governmental institution of the E.U. to conduct foreign policy at odds with the federal foreign policy against Russia and China. Even if he had been only been conducting bilateral diplomatic relations between his state and Russia and China, that his state government’s position would have conflicted with the E.U.’s position is problematic, for the belligerent foreign powers could have used Orbán’s state of Hungary to drive a wedge into the E.U. and thus weaken not only the defense of Ukraine, but also the E.U. itself as a federal union. Even just in terms of the union’s executive branch boycotting the presidency of the legislative Council of the E.U., the E.U. itself was weakened rather than unified at the federal level.

Most fundamentally, the state governments still had too much power relative to that of the union itself. Also, trying to conduct foreign policy at both the state and federal levels is just asking for trouble because they can work at cross-purposes and even confuse government officials of other countries. Russian officials, for instance, may not have known how much credence to give to Orban versus the condemnations by the Commission and the Parliament. 

Even by 2024, European integration had been tangibly realized in a federal union of states to the extent that one voice was needed on foreign policy, lest the E.U. compromise itself from within. Even though the economic domain had been the backbone of the E.U. coming out of the EC, it bears remembering that the European Coal and Steel Cooperative came out of the post-WWII need to keep an eye on Germany lest it remilitarize. A foreign-policy rationale is thus also baked into the E.U. as per at least one of the international European organizations that pre-existed the European Union. Put another way, the E.U. cannot be traced back only to the European Economic Community. Besides providing for smooth interstate commerce in a single market, peace in Europe is also a salient mission for the European Union, and in this regard being able to speak with one voice rather than divergent state and federal voices would be of great value were it operationalized rather than compromised.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “European Commission Boycotts Hungarian Presidency over Orbán’s Trips to Moscow and Beijing,” Euronews, July 15, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

4. P10_TA (2024)0003, “The Need for the E.U.’s Continuous Support for Ukraine,” 17 July 2024.

On Electing a U.S. President: The Case of President Biden’s Age

One of the reasons why the delegates at the U.S. Constitutional Convention devised the Electoral College to elect the federal president was that they thought that even at 7 million, the population of the U.S. back then was too large for the even just the propertied people, who could vote, to know the candidates very well, if at all. At over 300 million, the U.S. population during the presidential reelection campaign of Joe Biden had to rely on the mass media and the political elite, including statements by the White House, for information on whether the sitting president was too old to serve viably in a second term. The limited number of presidential electors in the states would presumably be small enough that they could have the opportunity to size up the candidates in person. But with electors from fifty rather than just thirteen states, such an opportunity would not be likely. So given the exponential growth of the United States both in terms of member states and their respective populations, the originally anticipated benefit of the Electoral College would not still hold even if the two major political parties had not taken over the College. Even if the states’ respective electors were able to spend enough time in person with the candidates, the parties had ensured that those electors could not be autonomous and thus exercise their judgment. Instead, judgment could only be made at a distance by the massive American electorate whose perspectives have been very vulnerable to intentional manipulation through and even by the media. Put another way, the American people have been vulnerable to making a bad choice based on faulty information. This makes American representative democracy itself vulnerable.

Under most circumstances, a president’s staff can manage how the president comes off to the public. The presentation can thus differ from how the president really is. Yet in casting a vote, a voter should be able to size up how the candidates really are. This is crucial when one of the candidates is already 81 years old. The Biden-Trump debate in June, 2024 was a rare opportunity to see both men beyond the reach of their respective handlers, and thus to get a glimpse of both men as they really were at the time. Whereas Don Trump came off as focused, the president was disoriented at times and generally appeared to suffer simply from old age. There is no fault in that; the fact that the rare glimpse came as a surprise to many Americans demonstrates the extent to which any president is managed on nearly all occasions for public consumption and thus how wrong the voters’ view of an incumbent can be. This insight, more than whether Joe Biden was too old to serve a second term whose beginning was still six months away, was universally missed by the media.

As if to confirm the realization of how much a president’s appearance is managed, and thus misleadingly positive as to a president’s person, the “Biden campaign said the president had a cold to explain why he sounded so hoarse and weak. But Biden’s stumbles right from the beginning [of the debate] played into his biggest vulnerability—his age.”[1] That a cold would not account for a person being disoriented and that Biden had no nasal congestion or even sneezing apparently did not occur to the president’s handlers. Their next explanation was that the president was suffering from jetlag from having flown internationally, but that he had not done so in 12 days also apparently did not occur to the campaign. As neither of these episodic explanations worked to diminish the rather obvious fact that old age is a condition rather than being merely showing in an isolated episode or event, the president himself tried again by telling a group of Democratic governors that he had not been getting enough sleep. If only getting more sleep could extinguish the general effects of old age, nursing homes would be empty. 

Not unexpectedly, “Biden’s comment left several of the governors in the room frustrated.”[2] Yet after the meeting, three governors “painted a positive picture of the meeting during a news conference [outside the White House], adding that Biden is ‘all in’ and ‘in it to win it.’”[3] That the White House had governors speak publicly after the meeting to reassure the electorate of the president’s viability without mentioning that some of the governors had just been frustrated by the claim that an episodic lack of sleep could somehow account for the general condition of old-age demonstrates just how deceivingly the electorate is manipulated and thus how erroneous its view of the president can be without the people realizing it. How could they? The implications for impaired electoral judgment based on (deliberately) faulty information are clear. Without realizing it, the electorates of the States could vote for a second term not unlike that of President Wilson's.

Even in portraying the president’s old-age as if it could possibly be a “one-off” episode, Biden's handlers were taking advantage of the fact that they could manage how the president comes off in almost all of his public appearances. Sitting down for an interview on the radio and television, and reading a speech from a teleprompter at a campaign rally are just a few examples of how the handlers can make the president’s debate “performance” appear to be a “one off” bad performance relative to the others. It is precisely because of the deceiving effect of the handlers that "Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman . . . told CNN that the president needed to do a prolongued and live television interview unlike the recorded one on ABC."[4] The implication is that the public had not seen Biden without guide-rails on ABC and thus could not judge from that appearance how he might do on his own behind the scenes in thinking through and using judgment in an international incident. That Biden's handlers had given a radio host a list of questions to ask the president during a radio interview and that the same questions were asked in other interviews, also after the debate, also attests to the widespread impact of the handlers[5]. I contend that voters should have been informed of this "stagecraft" so they could realize the extent to which their perceptions of the president were being manipulated and thus could lead to bad or impaired judgment in voting.

A performance, such as is staged for a television interview or a campaign rally, is not at all like an ongoing condition such as old-age, which goes on. Even though the condition of old-age is more apparent on some days than others, the underlying condition itself is ongoing, and in fact gradually gets worse even if the people closest to the person don’t notice the change and think he is ok. 

To intentionally portray such a condition as merely a bad performance (rather than a condition) by engineering good performances is intellectually and ethically dishonest. Leaving the electorate with a false impression, taking advantage of the distance between the people at the president, is precisely why the founders wanted the Electoral College. In other words, it is bad for American representative democracy that manufactured images of a president can have, and indeed have had an inordinate influence on voters' judgments. Shock from observing President Biden unfettered, and thus himself, during the debate reflects back on just how good a president's handlers are in crafting a "brand" for public consumption. That it is rare that the American people get to see the proverbial "man behind the curtain" (an allusion to the movie, The Wizard of Oz) can be inferred from just how shocked viewers were in glimpsing President Biden reacting in real time. 

Not satisfied with leaving viewers with their valid conclusions from what they had seen of the the president during the debate, self-interested presidential handlers with an agenda—winning the election—tried to supersede the common-sense conclusions as if they were invalid or incorrect. The president had a cold. He had jetlag. He had not been sleeping well. Anything but the truth. Even if the cause of the condition of old-age were a lack of sleep, smart voters would ask themselves what might happen were President Biden called to the Situation Room in the White House even as early as 10pm (and what about at 3am?) in 2027 to handle an emergency abroad involving the U.S. military. 

Ignoring that serious implication from their own narrative, the handlers scrambled nonetheless to get the president to a podium and teleprompter, and then, days later, to a television interview, as if the condition that the public had just seen during the debate were merely episodic too (and thus outweighable by the other appearances), the president’s handlers even got surrogates, including sitting governors, to publicly attest to the official narrative, which was that the president was fine and was "all in." Faced with this full frontal "corrective," how could the electorate's judgment on election day possibly reflect their authentic observations during the debate? Good judgment based on accurate empirical data is requisite to a voter being able to make a good decision on who should be president of the United States. 

The American people were left with oblique references on television by Jake Tapper of CNN and Carl Bernstein, one of the famous Nixon-Watergate reporters, of admissions heard behind closed doors by people who had witnessed Biden in person enough to know that the president had actually been disoriented on as many as 20 occurrences, especially during the preceding six months. Bernstein said on CNN, "The people I've talked to have all been to Ron Klain [Biden's chirf of staff] in the last year to say, 'We have a problem.'"[6]. That such stuff doesn't usually get out (and isn't meant to get out) and thus reach the American electorate is a large part of why the delegates at the Convention anticipated the need for an institutional check, the Electoral College, on the electorate itself should it make a bad decision. The need for such a check was live and well in 2024, and the Electoral College had never worked as intended, so there was a problem even though it was below the radar of public discourse in the media.

The Founders’ astute insight that not even 7 million citizens could know the candidates for the federal presidency well enough to exercise effective judgment in assessing them at the ballot box was behind the invention of the Electoral College. Even if it had ever worked as a check on bad judgment that can occur at a distance, the College could not be relied upon as such a check by 2024.

Historically, the main officeholders at the federal level of a federation, including the Holy Roman Empire, were chosen by officials at the state level rather than by the individuals in the states. In having state governors in the European Council nominate a candidate for President of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, the E.U. is in sync with the historical federal thought. Although the electors of the Electoral College in the U.S. meet by state, such that each state votes for president, state officials did not, at least as of 2024, have a role in selecting the federal president. 

That representatives elected by E.U. citizens in the European Parliament vote (as a parliament) on the nominee also deviates from the historical thought, which has state-level officeholders select federal officeholders. In American terms, the European Council nominating a candidate and the European Parliament voting on that candidate is roughly as if the U.S. Senate nominated a candidate for president and the U.S. House of Representatives voted on that candidate. Both unions instantiate modern federalism, which is a hybrid as governmental sovereignty is split between the state and federal institutions/governments, so the U.S. would not have to look very far for compatible ideas on how to modify the way its federal president is selected. This is not to say that the U.S. Senate should nominate candidates for president and the U.S. House should vote (not by state) to elect a nominee; rather, some role for governors and/or the Congress might serve as a viable check on the electorate, given the extent to which handlers manipulate the electorate and can thus cause it to make a bad decision on election day. 

Given the falsity in how handlers manage the presentation of a president, including President Biden, it should not be surprising that the American people make some bad decisions as an electorate. How many Americans in 2016 anticipated how President Trump would react to losing the election in 2020? The public image of the man in 2016 differed strikingly from the man himself, yet how many Americans knew even that such a difference existed (and exists for any occupant of the White House). 

To be consistent with historical federal thought, state legislatures and governors, rather than the Congress, would either elect the federal president or at least act as a check on the American people as an the electorate. It has been said especially in American anti-federalist historical thought that state officeholders are "closer to the people" because there are fewer people in the state-level districts than in the Congressional constituencies. But some states are quite populated themselves. Some big states, such as Illinois, California, Florida, and New York, could have a level of even smaller legislative districts by being federal themselves, hence with their respective sovereignties split between the state-level government and those of states within a given state. Such federated states would be like the E.U. states of Belgium and Germany. Chicagoland in Illinois could be like Bavaria in Germany. Having grown up in northern Illinois well outside of Chicagoland, I can attest that the Chicago metro is like another country even within Illinois (although I am a native Cubs baseball fan), even if Europeans like to assume that U.S. states are like provinces. 

Such a system of American federalism within federalism would resemble the federalism theory that Althusius describes, based on the Holy Roman Empire, in his Political Digest (1603). In that theory, the officials of the immediately lower "rung" select the officeholders of the next higher level. Given the E.U.’s process for selecting its executive-branch president, the U.S. could realistically incorporate at least one element of historical federal thought: namely, that the selection of at least one federal official could involve state-level legislators and/or heads-of-state. Because modern federalism, which both the E.U. and U.S. instantiate, is a hybrid only partially incorporating from the historical federal thought, a role for the Congress (like that of the European Council and the European Parliament in the E.U.) is an alternative candidate for a check. 

I submit that some hybrid of either state-level or federal-level office-holders could add a badly needed check-and-balance to the U.S. federal system of governance. In this respect, the E.U. is structured better than is the U.S., as per how a federal president is selected.

In conclusion, the issue of President Biden’s age in 2024 gave the American people an opportunity to see a basic vulnerability in how the federal presidency is filled, and looking to the E.U. affords the Americans a glimpse of a possible solution. How many American voters in 1968 and then again in 1972 had spoken with Richard Nixon in person without his handlers present and could thus realize how morally and criminally compromised the man really was? Sadly, even incumbents are marketed as if they were brands, and votes “buy” one on election day. So much more was at stake in 2024 than President Biden’s age, though insight on how that was being deceivingly managed by the president’s handlers could give Americans a sense of how vulnerable they really were even to their own judgments, given the misinformation. That the excuses of a cold, jetlag, and a lack of sleep—all under the incorrect premise that old-age is episodic rather than being a condition—are so pathetic and that being interviewed by a journalist, reading from a teleprompter at a (caffeinated?) rally, and meeting with governors could possibly be effective counterarguments should have given even Biden supporters pause concerning how an occupant of the federal presidency was being determined by 2024. The failure of the Electoral College could thus be understood as leaving the U.S. vulnerable.

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1 Domenico Montanaro, “4 Takeaways from the First Presidential Debate,” NPR.org, June 28, 2024 (accessed July 4, 2024).
2 Edward Dovere, “Biden Tells Democratic Governors He Needs More Sleep and Plans to Stop Scheduling Events after 8 p.m.” CNN.com, July 4, 2024.
3. Ibid.

4. Stephen Collinson, "Biden's ABC Interview Does Nothing to Quell the Existential Crisis around His Campaign," CNN, July 6, 2024, italics added.

5. Lauren Koenig, Samantha Waldenberg, and Betsy Klein, "Radio Host Who Interviewed Biden Says Aides Provided Questions in Adavance," CNN, July 6, 2024.

6. Joey Garrison, "'I'm the Nominee'," USA Today, July 5, 2024.

The U.S. Supreme Court Reining in Regulatory Agencies: Implications for the Imperial Presidency

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, a majority of the justices overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which had been the precedent giving regulatory agencies considerable discretion in coming up with specific regulations, given the penchant of the Congress to write vague laws. In the overturning case, a group of fishermen had objected to having to pay for government observers to board the fishing boats to monitor the fishing. On the merits, it does seem unfair for regulatory agencies to charge the regulated to be regulated. In overturning Chevron, however, Loper has much broader implications, chief among them being in terms of separation of powers—specifically in reining in the expanding power of the executive branch, here at the expense of the judiciary.   

Chevron had “required courts to give deference to federal agencies when creating regulations based on an ambiguous law.”[1] Loper could stimulate thought on whether Congress must necessarily promulgate law using vague language. Certainly Congress is capable of being quite specific when writing in loop-holes, or “carve outs,” for particular companies or industries in exchange for political campaign contributions. Moreover, from hearings, Congressional committee staff are surely capable of narrowing the discretionary area in which regulators can exercise considerable power that is essentially that of law-making. So one effect of Loper could be a shift of power from the executive to the legislative branch.

The decision also stood to “shift the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches.”[2] Although CNN goes on to claim that the decision “hands an important victory to conservatives who have sought for years to rein in the regulatory authority of the ‘administrative state’,” strengthening the role of the judiciary to look at administrative rulings is not in itself pro-business, as a judge could come down on an agency as being too lenient to an industry. The notion of regulatory capture, wherein whether from relying on data from a regulated industry or in exchange for lucrative future jobs in the industry for regulators, especially given government salary levels, means that giving courts more of a role in being able to evaluate and overrule agency rule-making and decisions could be a needed check against compromised regulators. At the same time, it is true that because the Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch of the federal government, a decision that shifts power from one or two of the other branches to the judiciary puts the Court in an institutional conflict of interest (and the justices in personal conflicts of interest as their power would likely increase). Perhaps Congress should have been the branch to decide on the role of the judiciary with respect to the agencies in the executive branch.

Shifting power from the executive branch to the two other branches, especially the judiciary in this case, can also be viewed as a mild correction to the steadily increasing power of the U.S. presidency. In The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger traces the increasing power that has come at the expense of the other two branches. The claim of such a correction may be problematic, as reining in regulatory agencies is not the same as reining in a president’s power, such as in exercising the bully pulpit in being able to speak directly to the American people directly as well as through a president’s surrogates. Also, a president as commander in chief and in promulgating foreign policy is unaffected.

It can even be argued that as presidents have typically been oriented to proposing broad policies for Congress to enact through law, that a president’s attention has been minimal in running the administrative agencies—essentially in supervising the cabinet secretaries in their administrative roles at their respective agencies. Such overseeing geared to specific regulations is, I submit, a function that presidents should attend to even more than proposing policies for Congress to enact. In other words, presidents should resist the sensationalistic allure of forming and publicly and privately “selling” policies or ideas for new programs to the extent that the time and effort of a president is monopolized thereby such that functioning as head of the executive branch, which implements law, is slighted. It could even be argued that the latter function should be primary. Were it in fact primary, then Loper would indeed be capable of redressing the historical trend of the imperial presidency to some extent because taking an active role at the regulatory stage would be a significant part of the actual power exercised by presidents. As of 2024 at least, Loper did not really touch the problem of the imperial presidency increasingly compromising the balance of power between the three branches of the U.S.’s federal government.

If democracy is ever at risk in the U.S., it would likely succumb to the hubris of an imperial president rather than to lawmakers in Congress writing laws with more specificity or judges overruling regulatory rulings. According to General Haig, President Nixon considered sending military forces to the Capitol to stave off impeachment during Watergate. Decades later, in December, 2023, protestors of the Congressional counting of the presidential votes of the states’ electoral colleges headed over to the Capitol from President Trump’s rally at the White House and successfully delayed the counting. On the very same day as its Loper decision, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling on another case—a decision that “limited the power of prosecutors to pursue obstruction charges” against the January 6^th protesters at the Capitol.[3] To the extent that that ruling could enhance the imperial presidency itself, June 28, 2024 at the Court may actually have been a net-gain for the presidency.

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1. John Fritze, “Supreme Court Overturns 1984 Chevron Precedent, Curbing Power of Federal Government,” CNN.com, June 28, 2024 (accessed June 29, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. John Fritze et al, “Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s Decision on January 6 Charges and What It Means for Donald Trump,” CNN.com, June 28, 2024 (accessed June 29, 2024).

On the E.U.’s Principle of Unanimity: The Case of Hungary

As of 2024, enlargement policy, foreign affairs, taxation, and the budget was “bound by the principle of unanimity,” which means that each state government has a veto in the European Council.[1] With 27 states, the E.U. could in effect be held hostage quite easily. Even in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the state of Hungary was blocking €55 billion in E.U. aid to Ukraine as of June 24, 2024, although revenue from frozen Russian financial assets in the E.U. could be used (because Hungary had not participated in the G7 decision) and Hungary had just reversed its veto against further sanctions against Russia. However, the €1.4 billion from the investment revenue pales in comparison and sanctions do not deliver desperately needed military hardware to the besieged country.

That Hungary’s de facto pro-Russian stance in E.U. foreign policy was contrary to the interest of the E.U. as a whole can be discerned from S&P Global’s report at the time, which states, “The geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine remain the main risks weighing on our immediate economic outlook.”[2] That the E.U. could ill-afford these foreign geopolitical headwinds economically is clear also from the report, which also claims “that European financial markets are too fragmented, too national, too expensive for issuers and for retail investors.”[3] The report then recommends that capital markets be federalized. What could stand in the way of that is the same residual problem underlying the antiquated principle of unanimity: namely, states’ rights, or, in European parlance, Euroskepticism, which in turn is rooted in nationalism ideology. That in turn had been responsible for so much war in the twentieth century. Indeed, the main rationale of the Shuman Plan in the wake of World War II had been to stave off another war. The European Coal and Steel Cooperative was intended to keep an eye on possible German re-militarization. Whether intentionally or de facto, the E.U. state of Hungary in 2024 was enabling Putin’s Russia and indirectly possibly increasing the risk of war within the E.U. by allowing Putin to divide the union.  

 That the E.U. had to go to the G7 decision to spend the revenue on frozen Russian funds in order to go around the opposition of Viktor Orban of Hungary is itself an indication that a “bug” was in the E.U.’s “software.” That János Bóka, Hungary’s Minister for European Affairs, “made it clear” that during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of Ministers during the second half of 2024, Hungary “would not help Kyiv open any of the 35 chapters that make up the six thematic clusters” of accession talks.[4] Instead, accession talks of Baltic states would be encouraged. Whether pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian, the Hungarian state government’s use of its veto and temporary presidency of the Council on the federal level seems to put the interest of a part (of the union) above that of the whole.

That the E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, had recently found the state of Hungary guilty of violating the E.U.’s basic law and ordered a significant fine be taken from the state’s allocation of federal money may be a factor in the active use of the state’s veto. At the very least, being fined by the E.U. put the state government in a conflict of interest in obstructing federal foreign policy. This is yet another reason why the E.U. could not afford the principle of unanimity. More bad news. Unfortunately, even efforts to correct this problem are fraught with a conflict of interest, as state governments would have to agree to give up the power they enjoy under the principle. Even if retiring the principle is in the interest of the whole (i.e., the E.U.), the political interests of the parts are not likely to subordinate their respective interests even for the good of the whole. Future enlargement of the union (which is not a “bloc” because the union is permanent and based in law) would most likely exacerbate the problems ensuing from putting the interest of a part, or the parts, above the good of the whole. And as argued above, belligerent foreign actors, such as Putin of Russia, could easily exploit this fundamental flaw in the E.U. for their own interests.

Who, therefore, is there to stand up for the E.U.’s interest? Perhaps as E.U. citizens, rather than the states, elect the representatives of the European Parliament, the way out of this pretzel may be to transfer some of the Council’s power to the Parliament, or at least to give the latter chamber more power as a check against excesses by state officials acting in the Council, including the Council’s presidency. That is to say, perhaps the conflicts of interest and the over-heavy interests of the parts at the expense of the whole in the E.U. are indicative of a need for a shift in power not only from the states to the union, but also within the union’s government itself.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Ukraine Heading for Accession Impasse during Hungary’s EU Council Presidency,” Euronews, June 18, 2024.
2. Idrabati Lahiri, “European Financial Markets ‘Too Fragmented,’ Warns S&P Global,” Euronews, June 24, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Jorge Liboreiro, “Ukraine Heading for Accession Impasse during Hungary’s EU Council Presidency.

On the U.S. Government’s Budget Deficits and Debt: American Democracy Unhinged

It is true that a government’s budget can be read as a blueprint of priorities in terms of what is valued, and what is not so highly valued. The blueprint itself, as a whole, also evinces a priority in terms of values. As the big-ticket items, such as large spending categories and massive tax-cuts, get the most attention, whether a budget is in balance can go by the wayside, and what that says about the electorate (and thus the state of democracy) can easily be missed. Ultimately, public policy and even the votes of the elected representatives point back to the popular sovereign, the People—more specifically, the electorate, and its values. By 2024, the deficit and accumulated debt of the U.S. Government had reached such gigantic numbers that something could be said to be amiss concerning those values. The underlying culprit, which can be said to be an illness that is human, all too human, had by then infected American democracy beyond the wherewithal of virtually any elected federal representative to enunciate well enough that the electorate could look clearly at itself, and thus size itself up beyond the partial diagnoses that can be found in partisan attacks.

In late June, 2024, the (nonpartisan) Congressional Budget Office forecasted a $2 trillion deficit for the year, up from an earlier estimate of $1.6 trillion.[1] At the time, the federal accumulated debt stood at $34 trillion. Whereas in the 1970s, the debt as a percent of GNP was in the low 30s, the percentage for 2023 stood at just over 120 percent. Clearly, the trajectory of deficits and debt was disproportionate even on a percentage basis. Furthermore, interest payments made by the U.S. Government, which the CBO director said were “large by historical standards,”[2] were poised to exceed the entire defense budget in 2024; and that recipients of interest-bearing bonds tend to be on the wealthy side, whereas the poor and middle-class pay taxes, the ballooning debt could be viewed as an engine of wealth-transfer from the poor to the rich via the U.S. Government, hence increasing economic inequality as an indirect effect of fiscal public policy. In short, something systemic was out of balance, with ethical implications.

Blaming large ticket items (i.e., federal spending) provides us with an easy target but only gets at a symptom. Regarding the 2024 fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office pointed to the $145 billion cost of the President’s changes to student loans and the $95 billion foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan enacted in April as the two largest factors.[3] Almost a trillion dollars for three countries. Healthcare costs came in third.

To be sure, the changes in student-loan policy under President Biden were in large part due to the spurious vocational claims of for-profit “universities and feckless accrediting agencies, with unemployed former students as the victims. The foreign-aid spending was associated with foreign policy objectives—holding back Russia and sending a message that military aggression (by Russia) is no longer acceptable in the 21^st century being foremost. In short, both deficit-growing factors were oriented to protecting victims, and thus could be justified ethically. Increased public health-insurance costs too can be justified ethically, given the value of health irrespective of income and wealth.

Even lofty goals come with costs, however, which may not be affordable. A sovereign government with the authority to “print money” need not be constrained by what it can afford, absent constitutional language mandating a balanced budget. Of course, spending is only half of the deficit equation; taxation being the other. That spending had been outstripping revenue since the Clinton administration can be traced back to the Reagan tax cuts. Regarding the deficit in 2024, the Trump tax cuts should also be remembered. Moreover, the refusal of Congresses and presidents to raise taxes to cover increases in spending when the economy is fine or (especially) good is also a factor in how the U.S. Government’s debt got to $34 trillion.

Both the proclivity to increase government spending and the reluctance to increase taxes (or defeat tax-cut proposals) leads us directly “under the hood” to popular sovereignty: Government by the People. That is to say, the American electorate is ultimately to blame for not electing representatives, senators, and presidents who resist the twin temptations. To be sure, differing political ideologies on the proper size of government, and, more specifically, the federal government, are also legitimate in voting decisions.

A believer in a small federal government, harkening back to Thomas Jefferson, might vote for candidates in favor of tax cuts in order to “starve” the federal government. But this strategy ignores the unlimited ability of that government to enact spending bills. A “small government” ideology should go after spending and taxes with enough tax revenue over spending in the out years to pay off the accumulated debt.

A believer in a large federal government (in absolute terms and relative to those of the states) has no problem resisting tax-cut proposals; it is the notion that a government can or should grow by increased spending, especially without increased taxation to cover both the additional spending and to pay off the accumulated debt, that is problematic.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. deficits (and debt) were significant in political discourse. David Stockton, President Reagan’s head of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget), wrote The Triumph of Politics to explain why Reagan failed to bring down the deficit numbers. The imbalance was in the public’s aversion to cutting domestic spending, Reagan’s increase in defense spending, and the president’s tax-cuts. In terms of the American electorate, the desire for immediate consumption, which includes tax-cuts, combined with the lack of responsibility can be cited as the ultimate source of the imbalance that may be inherent in democracy itself.

It is significant that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed long after they were out of the political arena that a viable republic requires an educated and virtuous citizenry. Put another way, self-government requires a sense of responsibility in terms of fiscal governance. That the debt of the U.S. Government had been allowed to reach $34 trillion by 2024 can be interpreted as a verdict, or an x-ray, on just how fit the American electorate had been to govern itself through its chosen representatives. The real threat to American democracy lies within. The threat, in fact, by 2024 may have become much more serious than even that of unbalanced fiscal policy.  For the proverbial invisible “elephant in the room” may no longer have merely been the failure of the American electorate to exercise its popular sovereignty with fiscal responsibility on governmental taxation and spending: the rising unexamined question may ironically have already relegated fiscal responsibility altogether in silently asking whether $34 trillion ever gets paid off. Like an insect whose legs are still twitching even though it is already dead, the U.S. Government may have already been effectively bankrupt without anyone realizing it. If this was already de facto the case by 2024, then the damning verdict, not seen yet in plain sight, would be on another level entirely. 

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1. Jennifer Scholtes, “$2T in Red Ink: Foreign Aid, Biden’s Student Loan Policies Hike U.S. Deficit Forecast,” Politico, June 18, 2024 (accessed June 22, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

E.U. Political Parties

Following the E.U. 2024 election, political parties jostled for members in the Parliament. Whereas the political duopoly of parties in the U.S. House of Representatives severely limits such skipping around, the European analogue puts more of an emphasis on party management in terms of weighing ideological or policy “purity” against the power that comes from size. In contrast, the two major parties in the U.S. must be content to be “big tents,” each of which contains groups. From the standpoint of the parties in the E.U. Parliament, the groups are at the state level. The defection of Andrej Babis and the rest of his group from the Renew Europe party just weeks after the E.U. election in June, 2024 demonstrates the distinct balancing task of the E.U. parties. Such balancing is not something that the American political duopoly of parties need do. I contend that the Americans could benefit by looking at the European case in this regard.

On the one hand, the departure of Babis’s group caused Renew Europe to go from 81 representatives to 74, further weakening its power in the federal legislative body. On the plus side, however, Valérie Hayer, Renew Europe’s head, observed of the departed representatives that “their divergence from our values” had “increased exponentially and we witnessed this with great concern.”[1] For his part, Babis pointed out, “We went to the European elections saying that we would fight against illegal migration, that we wanted to repeal the ban on internal combustion engines and fundamentally change the Green Deal. . . . Above all, we want the Czech Republic to remain a sovereign country.”[2] Although Babis’ claim that the Renew Europe party would not change its party platform on immigration and the Green Deal is correct, he could not very credibly blame the party because the Czech Republic had given up some of its sovereignty in becoming a state in the Union; qualified majority voting alone is part of that transfer, since Babis’ state could be on the losing side of a QMV in the European Council. Nevertheless, the ideological difference between Bibis’s group and the party on immigration and the Green Deal meant that the Renew Europe party would be more ideologically “tight” and thus powerful in that sense with the departure of Babis and his fellow MEPs, and they in turn could find another party closer to their views precisely because the Parliament contained several parties rather than just two. Hayer pointed to the impact on the party’s ideological position in saying that the departed MEPs’ “unwillingness to continue their commitment to liberal values has led to today’s outcome. They have turned their back to our firm pro-European convictions and values.”[3] More to the point, Hayer predicted that the party would be “more united.”[4]  Fewer members in the legislative body but more united: this is the trade-off that any party leadership in the E.U. Parliament had to balance in the post-election phrase of politics. I submit that this is a good thing.

A major benefit of the balancing act is that E.U. citizens going to the polls could more closely tailor their respective votes to their political positions or ideology than can U.S. citizens voting for members of the U.S. House. An American voter angry at the Israeli government, for example, did not have a choice of party opposing the military incursion into Gaza; both the Democratic and Republican parties supported Israel in 2024. In contrast, a European could vote for a party with a plank opposing military support for Israel. The drawback in the European case is in terms of political stability in the Parliament, but as even an increase in representatives in the parties on the right did not fundamentally alter the majority coalition of parties, the inertia of the status quo has considerable weight in maintaining stability even as multiple parties jostle for members while trying to stay true to specific values on the political spectrum. In other words, the fear of political instability from there being many parties in the Parliament is overstated.

Therefore, Americans could be less scared of deviating from the American duopoly of major parties, as if the credible advent of other parties being truly competitive would trigger seismic political instability. A recalibrated “cost-benefit” analysis of having a duopoly of just two major “big tents” could result in reforms in which voters would be better able to tailor their votes to their values and political positions without having to vote for whichever party is closer even if it isn’t really very close and may even have antipodal positions. The political-legal electoral architecture, or basic framework, that favors the duopoly would have to be fundamentally changed, and in a political culture of incrementalism, such a change is only possible but not probable. Even so, it doesn’t hurt to look to the E.U. for ideas. That is to say, the U.S. could learn a thing or two from the E.U.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “E.U. Liberals Dealt a New Blow after Czechia’s Andrej Babis Pulls Out His Seven MEPs,” Euronews, June 21, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Nominating and Electing the President of the E.U.'s Commission

Before the office of president of the European Commission can be elected by the European Parliament by a simple majority, the European Council must nominate a candidate. The nomination is by qualified majority vote, in that at least 55% of the states must be in favor and the combined population of the states voting yes must be at least 65% of the total population of the European Union. Were any state represented in the Council to have a veto (i.e., unanimity being required), the infeasibility alone of getting a candidate nominated would be astounding and prohibitive for the Union and especially its executive branch, the Commission. Just imagine if every sitting state governor in the U.S. meeting as the Senate (which represents the states) had to sign off on a candidate for that union’s executive-branch president before the House of Representatives (which represents citizens) could elect the candidate by a simple majority! From this comparison, we might wonder whether the European Council should be tasked with nominating two candidates, whom the representatives in the Parliament would then vote on in electing the president of Union’s executive branch. After all, there is more than one candidate when the U.S. House of Representatives votes (by member state!) to elect the president if no candidate receives a majority of the votes of the states’ electoral colleges. Indeed, the E.U. is not the only federal union in which states have a significant role in electing the head of the (federal) executive branch. I contend that the members of parliament should have a choice of more than one candidate when voting for the president of the E.U.’s executive branch. This is as of June, 2024, when the European Council was busy coming up with a nominee; being able to present two nominees to the Parliament would have made the Council’s job easier and the Parliament’s voting more democratic.

With no decision on a nominee at the Council’s informal dinner on June 17, 2024, a meeting was set for June 27^th to make another attempt, doubtless after ten days of horse-trading in private. With the European People’s Party having amassed the most seats of any party in the Parliament, that party was able to continue its coalition agreement with the Renew Europe party even though it had lost 20 seats compared to 2019. With the Green party and the Socialist party, the coalition could have 400-plus seats. The right-wing Identity and Democracy party and the European Conservatives and Reformists party gained members, though not as many as expected, so the People’s Party did not have to reach out to those parties in putting together the governing coalition. Such a coalition was necessary because the EPP did not get a majority of the 720 seats. To be sure, political groups at the state level in some states, such as Le Pen’s group in France and the Alt group in Germany could feed into the right-wing parties in the Parliament and affect how they relate, and those parties in turn had the option of combining into one larger party to act as a united opposition to the grand coalition. However, the ID party’s efforts had not borne fruit as of the Council’s informal dinner.[1]

Rather than get consumed by the various mechanizations of the state-level groups, a matter of more importance on the federal level is that of how much of a say the federal-level parties represented in (and recognized by) the European Parliament that were not in the majority coalition should have in the nominating process.

At the informal dinner, a “raft of bilateral and trilateral meetings between the three main parties—the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and the Liberals—helped bridge the gaps but became bogged down by the EPP’s maximalist demands.”[2] Those likely included the demand to split the term of the Council’s president to have an EPP person in for 2.5 years even as Von der Leyen, who wanted a second term as president of the Commission and was in the EPP, was likely to be nominated. That the parties on the right were left out of the discussions even though they had gained seats in the Parliament was not lost on Viktor Orbán of the E.U. state of Hungary, who said, “The will of the European people was ignored today in Brussels,” at the end of the meeting.[3] Those parties would have been justified in objecting to the “custom” whereby the candidate from the party of the most seats, the EPP in 2024, is supposed to be automatically “rubber-stamped” by the Council as its nominee; at least as of 2024, the Council had a free hand constitutionally (i.e., in terms of the E.U.’s basic law) in picking a nominee, as the Council is independent of the Parliament. On a basic level, the Council represents the states while the Parliament represents E.U. citizens (and residents). That the largest party in the Parliament should have its candidate automatically nominated by the Council also runs up against the separation between the legislative-branch Parliament and the executive-branch Commission.

Were the Council tasked with presenting at least two nominees to the Parliament, the nominating process would obviate (or eviscerate) the custom of rubber-stamping the wishes of the largest party in the Parliament. The E.U. parties on the right that were not included in the EPP’s majority-coalition could perhaps have seen a candidate representing the right compete with the other nominee at the election stage at the Parliament. Should the Council come up with more than two nominees in the future, then the Parliament could simply include a process of elimination feature in its voting process. Rather than risk the Parliament rejecting a sole nominee from the Council, which would bring the process back to the Council, and so further delay the selection, the Commission would not have to face the possibility of being without a head for so long. In the midst of the Russian military menace on the eastern flank of the E.U. in 2024, elongating the nominating and electing process would not be in the interest of the European Union.

As it stood in 2024, the nomination of just one candidate followed by a vote in the legislative lower house was more like the nomination by the U.S. president of one person to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the subsequent majority vote by the U.S. Senate than the way the U.S. House of Representatives elects the President if no candidate has received a majority of the combined electors of the states’ electoral colleges. I contend that the selection of the head of the E.U.’s executive branch should not be like that of a U.S. justice, for unlike the latter, the former is not supposed to be immune from politics. This is not to say that the dominant coalition of the Parliament, or the largest party, should have political control the President of the Commission. Rather, it is to say that democratic competition at the election stage of that president is fitting (whereas it wouldn’t be for selecting a justice). Comparing the E.U. and U.S. can thus be seen as a beneficial project for both unions as each seeks to be better as systems of public governance.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Analysis: Why Orbán, Meloni, and Fiala Are Angry about the E.U. Top Jobs,” Euronews, June 19, 2024.
2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.