Episode 3: Bullets (Not) Dodged, Part 3 – Shocked, Shocked!
February 3, 2021
The Presidency – the great and the not-so-great; the person or the platform: the voter’s choice, and the country’s consequences.
The quadrennial choice Americans make was particularly fateful in 2016, and Akhil asserts that itself this was a bullet not dodged. The unique nature of the American Presidency places enormous burdens on the office’s holders, but so, too, does it ask much of the American people as they exercise the franchise. What makes a good president? What should Americans consider, and how can they frame the choice? Akhil and Andy find lessons in the early republic, and the early Akhil, for that matter. And of course, a few words about the recent occupant of the office. Should we have known what we were in for?
Show Notes:
Episode 2: Bullets Dodged, Part 2 – The Faithless and the Feckless
January 27, 2021
More constitutional minefields on the road from Election to Inauguration. Faithless electors; SCOTUS follies; Ministers and ministerial duties; The West Wing, again.
Continuing our discussion of the various disasters that might have befallen America during the election period, this time exploring the period after the election and before the Electoral College, and then as Congress prepared to meet and certify the vote. The toxic mixture of the Greeley precedent and Faithless Electors was rendered a veritable Chernobyl by a 2020 Supreme Court decision that Akhil finds, shall we say, imperfect. Life imitates art (The West Wing, again)? Actually, it’s more frightening than that.
Show Notes:
Clip from West Wing episode, “Twenty Five;” wherein VP has resigned and President implements 25th Amendment temporarily.
Episode 1: Inauguration: Bullets Dodged
January 20, 2021
Introducing “Amarica’s Constitution;” Electoral pitfalls in the Constitution and the election of 2020 – Part I.
It didn’t feel smooth, but believe it or not, many things that might have gone wrong in the recent election – didn’t. For example, what happens if a candidate dies on or about Election Day? Akhil and Andy discuss how issues of election timing, the electoral college, the Greeley Precedent, presidential succession, the 12th and 25th Amendments, and partisan politics make for a witches’ brew that is denying Professor Amar his beauty sleep.