Tony Benn Quotes

In what other democracy is the President in charge of the executive and the legislature and the judiciary?

The Constitution of the United States doesn't change the powers of the president based on the number by which you get elected.

In America you elect the electoral college and they select the President. In Russia, the people select the President directly. This is more democratic.

Our President is not a King, nor our senate a House of Lords.

You are apprehensive of monarchy; I of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

Under the French system, you have to take into consideration that every five years, the president is directly elected by the people. He's the one that has the legitimacy.

Here in Brazil, the president and the vice president are elected together.

The American system is, in many ways, more difficult, certainly far more expensive and much longer than a parliamentary system, and I really admire the people who subject themselves to it. Even when I, you know, think they should not be elected president, I still think, well, you know, good for you I guess, you're out there promoting democracy and those crazy ideas of yours.

I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England - or the Queen - and have the real business of the presidency conducted by ... a city manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years.

The popular choice is not elected as president.

The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.

The people participate in votes in their states to choose electors to elect the president, but the people don't elect the president. We are not a democracy; we are a democratic republic. We have a representation system of government.

It's up to American citizens to decide who they elect as president.

What is the purpose of the electoral college? It has a few purposes. One, it's to restrain pure democracy. Very good, very important, that's a wonderful thing.

The Electoral College is a project that calls on their judgment. If we don't like it, we can talk about how to eliminate it. I'm not quite convinced we should eliminate it completely. I think it's important to have a final check be somebody other than the Supreme Court. But given that it's there, we should take it seriously. And taking it seriously says they should exercise their judgment according to the moral values, the principles that are part of our constitutional tradition today. And those principles say equality.

I ran for the electoral college. I didn't run for the popular vote.

And remember, this was a president (George W. Bush) who was selected by the Supreme Court rather than the people.

I have allowed the president to pick his political appointees…But I will not sit quietly and let him shred the Constitution.

We Americans think we enjoy self-government. We have all the trappings of self-government, like elections. But in reality, we have gradually lost many of our rights to govern ourselves. We have the form of self-government, but only some of the substance. We are, in a sense, a nation run by a handful of judges who often enforce, not the law, but their personal opinions.

Our Constitution wisely assigns both joint and separate roles to each branch of the government; and a President and a Congress who hold each other in mutual respect will neither permit nor attempt any trespass.

I don't want to get too nuanced, but we have the electoral college in the United States and that means we don't have direct democracy.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.

What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.

Every president since George Washington has respected this clause in the Constitution. We want to avoid that Constitutional potential crisis. And the way to do it is for Donald Trump - it's not about him.