Originally Posted by
Bare Plane
but Obama and Clinton won the popular vote. I think that is a difference you could also mention.
So did Grover Cleveland when Benjamin Harrison ran against him. Guess who ended up in the White House? See also Rutherford B Hayes and John Quincy Adams. That's our system. Been with us a long time and we're still here. It's thus a difference accounted for by the tried and true system we've been using for over two hundred years. You've got your system, we've got ours. End of.
Part of our system's working prevents a Helmut Kohl (16 years as PM) from happening here, or a Margaret Thatcher (12 years), since the 22d amendment was passed. (Now, if you liked Kohl or Thatcher, you might think term limits bad, and if you didn't like Kohl or Thatcher, you might think term limits were good).
That amendment happened thanks to some of the side effects of an extended time in that office by one individual and the political reaction to it. I might add, that amendment was passed by using the tools present in the same constitution that the EC is in. This means, to Stay On Topic, that Donald has either 4 or 8 years to change whatever he thinks he needs to change, and make a deal with Congress to do so. It'll be interesting to watch.
What does any of that have do with the subject at hand,
mein freund, in terms of defense spending? It makes long term thinking harder to do, except that the purse strings have always been in Congress. So whatever whim a given President has tends to get mitigated/tempered by Congress, be it to grow or to shrink, or to pursue a particular pet project or series of them.
If your whinge is about American politics in general, I'd suggest you head over to Jet Blast. There's plenty of noise there for you to join in on. It's many v many.
If you want to talk about the impact on the Defense Budget, and specifically military aircraft and related systems, then by all means engage on those topics.