Failed State Or Failed Presidency: America’s Sneeze & Sri Lanka’s Pneumonia

By Rajan Philips –NOVEMBER 7, 2021

Rajan Philips

If nothing else, the phenomenon of Trumpism in America has created a rather morbid global curiosity about American politics. Sri Lankans, whether they are in Sri Lanka or America, are no exception. And ‘dual citizens’, both current and former, are likely to be doubly curious. All of this is reflected in the current coverage of American politics and news stories in the Sri Lankan media, including the Sunday Island. The latest news story and commentary are about the beating President Biden’s Democratic Party took at a few of America’s off-year elections last week. In the wake of that beating, Newsweek’s Bill Powell has speculated that “Democrats are staring at the possibility of a failed presidency” for Joe Biden. President Biden himself seems to be quite open about it.

He has reportedly said, “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens.” “What happens” – refers to Democrats’ ability, or lack of it, to pass major legislations before next year’s mid-term Congressional and Senate elections. Two massive pieces of legislation, one for physical infrastructure (with a price tag of $1.0 trillion) and another for social welfare measures (at $1.75 trillion slashed from $3.5 trillion), have been stuck in Congress for months mostly due to disagreement among Democrats – between the progressive and the moderate wings of the Party. A pox on both your wings, the voters in jurisdictions where elections were held seem to have told Democrats. Republicans, still carrying the cross of Trump, ended up winning.

The delay in passing the much-touted legislations is believed to have been a major factor in the Democratic candidate’s defeat in the Governor’s election in the State of Virginia and other down ballot positions. Biden won Virginia in the presidential election last year by a 10-point margin. The defeat in Virginia and poor showings in other off-year elections do not portend well for Democrats in next year’s mid-term Congressional elections. Democrats have a slender majority of 10 seats in the House and the parties are evenly split in the Senate. After last week’s elections, Republicans are widely predicted to retake control of the House and the Senate in 2022. That would leave President Biden a virtual lame duck president and potentially leaving office after a single term. Hence, the premonition of a failed presidency.

Sri Lanka’s Complications

What has all of this got to do with Sri Lanka? And its President, who is no longer a US citizen? When can one talk about a failed state? And when about a failed presidency, or government? The ‘failed state’ diagnosis was once part of political commentary, and even Sri Lanka was at times diagnosed as being, if not one already, at least enroute to becoming one. Failed state talk has since faded away. Failing governments are more commonly experienced than failed states. Governments fail and are felled at elections by the vote of the people. The process is clear-cut in a parliamentary system. Not quite in a presidential system like the US, and it gets more complicated in Sri Lanka’s hybrid presidential-parliamentary system.

For instance, in a parliamentary system, the legislature (which also encompasses the cabinet executive) can express ‘no confidence’ in a government and precipitate a general election prematurely, and the people will have the opportunity to elect a new or different government. In the US, there is no provision to express ‘no confidence’ in a president and force him to face the people in an election. The only provision for expelling a president is the impeachment process and that too is not for political failures but for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” . And the process is designed as a legal procedure conducted by elected legislators.

The two arms of the Congress are elected periodically for fixed terms with no provision for election or change in between. Members of the Congress cannot be Ministers, and are not part of the executive, or Administration. Failures between elections are attributed to the Administration and the blame falls on the elected President and he/she will go out of office at the next election, and into history as a failed president. The system works, as it has worked over two centuries.

The system is also sustained, apart from the separation of powers and the checks and balances in Washington, by the distribution of powers among the States and other jurisdictions. It was their independence from Washington that thwarted Donald Trump’s very serious efforts to steal the election in 2020. At the same time, the Trump presidency exposed the vulnerability of the system (or any system, for that matter) to abuse, stress and even collapse, when a president chooses to bend the system to his/her will and not abide by the system as he/she must. And Trump was seen as an aberration, a costly exception that proved the rule.