This will be controversial
Centralized powers
I personally do not believe the role of commander-in-chief should be a presidential role in the United States of America.
Major functions of the Executive Branch:
- Department of Defense: The Army, The Navy, The Marines, The Air Force, as well as The DIA and The NSA.
- Department of Veterans Affairs: Responsible for servicemember caretaking and assistance.
- Department of State: Foreign policy.
- Department of Education: Educational policy in public schools.
- Department of the Treasury: The IRS and Tax policy.
- Department of Homeland Security: Border security and immigration policy.
- Department of Justice: The FBI.
- Department of Energy: Energy policy.
- Department of Agriculture: Government’s interaction with domestic food production. Additionally responsible for the major welfare program SNAP; the largest part of their budget.
- Department of the Interior: Responsible for federally owned land. This department commands The National Park Service. It also administers programs for American Indians, Native Alaskans, and Native Hawaiians.
- Deparmtnet of Commerce: Import and Export policy, can decide which products are banned or more expensive.
- Department of Transportation: Albiet not as influential as regional Transportation Secretaries, there is a budgeting aspect and an overall agenda-setting role here.
- Department of Health and Human Services: The FDA, The CDC, The NIH, as well as Medicare and Medicaid all reside here.
- Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes government unemployment statistics, other labor market economic data, and determines government interaction and policy on labor unions.
- The Head of The CIA also has a seat on the President’s executive cabinet.
The President is the boss of everything listed above.
He or She can ultimately have the final say in any decisions made, can direclty request things from any department or agency, and is going to drive the agenda + overrall direction + goals these Departments will work towards, with rhetoric, executive orders, signing congressional bills, veto powers, and other things in the presidential toolkit.
There is way too much power condensed into the office. Coupling that with the slowness and inefficiency of the legislative branch (Congress), and the judicial branch (Supreme Court), it’s really not surprising that the winner of the presidential election is able to steamroll their agenda through and move as a forceful bloc. Regardless of political leaning, the Executive branch is set up to be the dominant force in the current government.
According to U.S. law, the Senate decides if we can declare war or not. That rule is obsolete and has a lot of loopholes, giving the Commander in Chief full authority to deploy troops for military operations and to authorize drone strikes.
You also have to take into account the fact that civilians are the ones propping individuals into the oval office.
Why should college kids and office workers decide who deploys the military and who authorizes operations? That doesn’t seem fair.
Give servicemembers their rightful ability to control the decision.
Given how many powers current rest inside the oval office, I don’t think it’s farfetched or unfair to say that something as critical as the ultimate authority of the military should be a separate position altogether.
A brand new Office of the Commander in Chief should be established to independently preside over the Department of Defense, and the branches of the military, with the Secretary of Defense being relegated to a more diplomatic position that functions as a liason between a newly independent military and the White House.
The newly established Office of the Commander in Chief should be a democratically elected position. This election should be an isolated election not open to U.S. civilians or non-citizens. Only current serving members of the United States Military and Veterans will be allowed to participate in this election. Voting rights for newly enlisted members should be restricted, and a minimum of 1 year of service should be required to prevent artificial injections of new recruits from swaying elections.
There should be an impeachment process as well. The impeachment process should be restricted to Non-Commissioned Officers, the demographic dubbed as “the backbone of the military”. If a majority of combat experienced active duty members and combat experienced veterans wish to do so, they should be able to call for impeachment and call for emergency elections.
It’s their ass on the line after all. We will always need boots on the ground for certain things. You can’t use drone strikes for everything; just look at how that worked out in Yemen and Syria. Final reminder that many of drone strikes were authorized by someone overwhelmining elected by civilians.
Final thoughts
This is more of a blueprint sketch than a solidified finalized solution. There are a lot of additional kinks and considerations that would need to be hammered out. A lot of specifics would need to be addressed and encoded into law. I’m also not sure how you’d ever convince a president to willingly give up that much power.
Despite this, I believe it’s necessary for the military to be able to decide it’s own destiny in an internalized liberal democratic way.
I know the original intent was civilian oversight of the military, but I truly do not believe civilians should be resonsible for where men and women are sent to potentially die. The military is a very small percentage of the population. We have a voluntary military. Nobody is forced to join. Give them their own say.