GOLIKEHELLMACHINE: i don’t actually know this, this isn’t a rhetorical question, but, like, do other representative democracies expect that their heads of state maintain 14-16 hour a day, 7 day a week schedules, or is that just specific to our national obsession with looking busy?

i don’t actually know this, this isn’t a rhetorical question, but, like, do other representative democracies expect that their heads of state maintain 14-16 hour a day, 7 day a week schedules, or is that just specific to our national obsession with looking busy?

like, does the german political press expect scholz to be engaged in meetings at 8PM?

Did anybody expect that of the president until Biden Old discourse?

I don't think it's entirely new. I remember hearing someone defend George W Bush taking a vacation by saying that a vacation for the President meant working an 8 hour day rather than a 14 hour day.

He also famously took way more vacations than his predecessors. And his brain was kind of shot even though he was a lot younger than Biden.

Yeah, I remember 'look how much time he's spending not at work' articles about each of the preceding 3+ presidents. So it's not an entirely new thing.

He was never a 14 hour day President on the regular.

Of course not. Nor do the Austrians or the Swiss. 25 years ago I saw the Swiss President get on the public bus in Bern. The passengers greeted her with "Grüessech Frau Dreifuss" and then politely ignored her so she could quietly ride to Parliament. There were evening engagements, but not nightly.1/

Geschichte der Sozialen Sicherheit-Dreifuss, Ruthwww.geschichtedersozialensicherheit.ch

European politicians are allowed to have lives, and like most Europeans don't have the insane American ethos that if you aren't emailing/texting your colleagues at 9pm weeknights as well as on weekends that you're somehow unproductive. END/

Churchill famously got by on fairly little sleep, but he also once gave a legendary bollicking to the aide who dared wake him up just because Hitler had invaded another country, since there was nothing he could do about it at 5AM anyway..

I don't think we care that much tbh . The Merkel model of mostly flying under the radar stay he been pretty popular .

Also for all those representetive things like handing out medals and stuff we have a president who doesn't have much power . Not sure why the VP doesn't do more of the representive functions the US president still does.

Like i know americans make fun of the UK monarchy but it's useful to a post that handles all the stuff that doesn't require actual political decisions. Brits just really overpay for theirs.

I can’t remember that this has ever been a topic, like, ever.

On Sundays??? Ach du liebe Zeit!

Scholz is notably not head of state in Germany

The previous guy literally played golf for 40 hours a week lol, the bad faith cloud is now via8ble from space

He didn’t even start his 2 hour work day until 11.

I assume that appearing busy & important is easy but working hard is optional

Our PM spent his first 8 years in office claiming he slept 4 hours a week. That explains why he is dogshit at literally every part of his job man needs rest

He also allegwdly worked 20 hours a day 7 days a week for these fuckall results so maybe he's just really really incompetent too

Didn't he also claim he personally stopped the war in Ukraine for a bit

Of course he did. He also on e halted a Himalayan landslide, evacuated ppl from his home state personally and then ceased concentration and allowed the rocks to fall. He is a very special man

Yknow what this actually is making me take him less seriously which I feel like is not the intended effect

They all claim to do it, Churchill and Thatcher made huge deals about how little sleep they needed. www.blindsdirectonline.co.uk/sleep-like-w... My take, if you can't do the job without bullshit hours, you shouldn't be doing it, give it to someone competent enough to get a full night's sleep

The Crazy Sleeping Habits Of World Leaders | Blinds Direct Onlinewww.blindsdirectonline.co.uk We're always told a good nights sleep is the key to success but that doesn't seem to be the case for these leaders, read more to learn their key to success.

Also said about Hitler and for that matter Huey Long. Biographers love it

A recurring theme of politics in India seems to be looking at some US nonsense and thinking, 'ha, amateurs! I can do that TEN TIMES AS MUCH'

It's specific to Democrats. Trump was the hardest-working president maybe ever when he spent a 3rd of his Presidency "golfing" (selling state secrets to our enemies and raping children).

EXECUTIVE TIME

Making many calls and having many meetings

So much time zonked out of his gourd on the shitter

I can’t find the article for it right now, but Trump apparently spent all morning in the residence section sitting in bed watching TV and it was put in his calendar as “executive time.”

combo head of state/head of government is a bitch

I think the campaigning also sucks up far more of his time than the government job, and the associated travel is a bitch.

But like ultimately, we don't really have ANY specific expectation for the president's working hours, and we don't have any real expectations for the president's *work*. What are you supposed to do all day? What do any of them do all day?

The central part of the job is to make decisions; that basically requires choosing between proposals by different subordinates on various matters.

And all the easy decisions have already been made by your subordinates.

You’d think there is enough to do as President without throwing in wreath-layings; state dinners; turkey pardonings.

From what I understand it's function of our President be an executive with a capital E, the Prime Minister of the UK, for instance, simply has a lot more bureaucracy and shares a lot more power with Parliament.

and is not head of state

I mean “head of state” means functionally a lot less when winning an election more or less automatically appoints cabinet positions. The parliamentary system vests most power with parliaments.

there's an entire category of things that head of state does and head of government doesn't. functionally we do devolve a good chunk of that to other proxies, but our system is somewhat rare in that head of state and head of government are the same person.

you obviously can manage to get by with them being the same person-- we have-- but there are good reasons (not always the same good reasons) why most other systems don't.

As always, it's instructive that in the postwar reconstruction we provided our constitutional structure to zero (0) defeated foes

i always remind myself that the founding fathers, for all their failures and negotiations to try and hold together their fragile new country that had already failed one attempt at democratic self governance, were really making shit up in uncharted territory.

To me, the most interesting set up is independent countries that used to be part of the British Empire (e.g. Canada and Australia) that continue to use the British Monarch as the Head of State via an appointed Governor General.

If you look at say Ireland or Israel, they have an elected President with (very limited) powers as head of state and then a PM as head of government. And then there’s France.

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