The Wall

When you pull back and look at meta trends, the frame changes.

For example, European history was shaped for centuries by conflicts between the pope and ruling monarchs over things such as 'who had the authority to appoint a bishop?' or 'who has jurisdiction in this situation?' or 'does the pope crown the king?'

Hard to remember in the present day, with the separation of church and state (which developed over centuries for Very Good Reasons), but you'd have a hard time truly understanding parts of history without that frame.

I wonder if there is a similar meta-frame in the current political imbroglio. Our Founding Fathers created checks and balances between the three branches of the government for good reason, but on a meta-level the last century or so has shown the rise of the presidency to an unprecedented degree. My classes talked a bit about how that happened, about how it's easier to try and influence one president over multiple members of Congress.

There's a heckuva lot to get into on this topic, too much to do justice to the topic. If you're interested, definitely look up the academic research on it.

I brought it up because the standoff between Pelosi and Trump is as much about who truly has the power of the purse as it is about all the other things we see in the news.

Congress is the legislature. It's supposed to pass laws and handle the budget. We've allowed the president to take the lead on such things, in recent history, in part because the sitting president is considered the leading power in his (and maybe someday her) party. As such, the congressional members of that party don't really want to undermine him or air public disagreements.

So the standoff, to most, is the typical Republican vs Democrat shenanigans we're used to, showing in a shutdown that is worse than (but not much different from) previous shutdowns.

Yet I can't help thinking that it undermines the precious checks and balances written into our constitution. After all, the president was clearly NOT given the power of the purse, nor the right to create legislation.

If he wants a wall so badly, he should really be doing his best to make sure more Republicans are elected next time.

But that's not the way our political system is working these days.