The Job of President

In Sunday's Washington Post, Joel Achenbach talks about Presidential Job descriptions. There is a great deal of agreement in the political science community that the job of President, as written, is undoable. Most presidents have aides make many decisions that could better be made by an elected official. This is not necessarily salutory for representative government.

The way around this is to homogenize regional boundaries across agencies and create regional vice presidencies and regional congressional caucuses to handle most of these affairs (from base closings to regional economic policy). Regional VPs could be elected by the electoral college, with each nominee appointing a slate and the winner of the most votes in that region elected to office. In other words, in New England/New York, you would likely have a Democratic RVP. In Dixie, you would have a Republican, etc. The stability would be good for government.

The regional VPs could meet in a council headed by the VPUS, who could also oversee domestic agencies with a national mission as follows:

The Department of Science containing

• NASA,
• Public parks
• Public land distribution to tribes and regions
• Air Traffic Control,
• Highway Safety,
• Fuel economy,
• Environmental Superfund,
• Medical Research and Drug regulation,
• National Parks and
• Patents.

The Department of Treasury and Commerce, which would include

• Economic statistics,
• The Census,
• Engraving and Printing,
• Comptroller of the Currency,
• The public debt,
• Social Security privatization and
• Collection of an income surtax on the wealthy to pay off the debt

The Department of Justice and Civil Rights, which would

• monitor the civil rights performance of regions,
• recommend executive clemency,
• represent the United States,
• provide workplace safety and wage and hour regulation (which some regions will likely do poorly).
  
  This arrangement would free the President to focus on what is really important: defense, foreign affairs and homeland security. The existence of regional vice presidencies would also narrow the field of presidential "eligibles" to people who have held this office and high level flag officers. Governors and Senators would be outclassed.
  
  For more on this proposal, see the relevant chapter of my book at http://xianlp.blogspot.com/2009/10/regional-government.html