1. The ideal of the free individual has had a profound effect on the way Americans view their government. Traditionally, there has been a deep suspicion that government is the natural enemy of freedom, even if it is elected by the people. The bigger and stronger the government becomes, the more dangerous many Americans believe it is to their individual freedom. This suspicion of strong government goes back to the men who led the American Revolution in 1776. These men believed the government of Great Britain wanted to discourage the freedom and economic opportunities of the American colonists by excessive taxes and other measures that would ultimately benefit the British aristocracy and monarchy. Thomas Paine, the famous revolutionary writer, expressed the view of other American revolutionists when he said, ". . . Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one..."

3. The way in which the national government is organized in the U.S. Constitution provides an excellent illustration of the American suspicion of governmental power. The provisions of the Constitution are more concerned with keeping the government from doing evil than with enabling it to do good. The national government, for example, is divided into three separate branches. This division of governmental power is based on the belief that if any one part or branch of government has all, or even most of the power, it will become a threat to the freedom of individual citizens. 4. The legislative or lawmaking branch of the government is called the Congress. Congress has two houses — the Senate, with two senators from each state regardless of the size of its population, and the House of Representatives, consisting of a total of 435 representatives divided among the fifty states by population. (In the House, states with large populations have more representatives than states with small populations, while in the Senate, each state has equal representation.) The president, or chief executive, heads the executive branch, which has responsibility to carry out the laws. The Supreme Court and lower national courts make up the judicial branch. The judicial branch settles disputes about the exact meaning of the law through court cases. It both interprets the law and determines whether the law is constitutional — that is, whether the law is permitted under the U.S. Constitution.

5. If any one of the three branches starts to abuse its power, the other two may join together to stop it, through a system of checks and balances. The Constitution is most careful in balancing the powers of the legislative and executive branches of the government because these two (Congress and the president) are the most powerful of the three branches. In almost every important area of governmental activity, such as the power to make laws, to declare war, or to conclude treaties with foreign countries, the Constitution gives each of these two branches enough power to prevent the other from acting on its own. 6. Observers from other countries are often confused by the American system. The national government may seem to speak with two conflicting voices, that of the president and that of Congress. For example, a treaty with a foreign government signed by the president dies if the Senate refuses to ratify it — that is, if the Senate doesn't vote to accept it. The Senate has certain powers over foreign treaties and, with the House, military actions. This requires the president to have "the advice and consent of the Senate" before taking certain actions on the international front. The Senate also must approve all the members of the president's cabinet, such as the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense.

7. On the other hand, the president may prevent a bill passed by Congress from becoming law. When both houses of Congress have agreed on a piece of legislation or a resolution, it is sent to the president. The president has ten days to act, not counting Sundays. At that point, there are four possibilities:↵
1) The president agrees with the bill, signs it, and it becomes law.↵
2) The president disagrees with the bill, vetoes it, and sends it back to the Congress with his or her reasons for refusing to sign it. If two-thirds of both the House and the Senate vote to override the president's veto, the bill becomes law.↵
3)The president may take no action and after ten days (not counting Sundays), the bill becomes law without his signature.↵
4) If the Congress adjourns before the ten-day period is over, and the president has neither signed nor vetoed the bill, it is defeated. This is called a pocket veto. Presidents sometimes do this with bills they do not like but do not want to go on record as having vetoed.

8. Although the American system of divided governmental power strikes many observers as inefficient and even disorganized, most Americans still strongly believe in it for two reasons: (1) It has been able to meet the challenges of the past, and (2) it gives strong protection to individual freedoms. 9. In addition to dividing government powers into three branches, the Constitution includes a Bill of Rights that is designed to protect specific individual rights and freedoms from government interference. Some of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights concern the freedom of expression. The government may not interfere with an individual's freedom of speech or freedom of religious worship, or the right to assemble (get together). The Bill of Rights also guarantees the right of a fair criminal procedure for those accused of breaking laws. These rights are sometimes called "due process." They include provisions that someone accused of a crime must be charged with the crime and is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The accused has the right to an attorney, and there must be a trial declaring someone guilty before punishment is given. Thus, the Bill of Rights is another statement of the American belief in the importance of individual freedom.

10. The president and both houses of Congress have almost complete political independence from each other because they are all chosen in separate elections. For example, the election of the Congress does not determine who will be elected president, and the presidential election does not determine who will be elected to either house of Congress. This system is quite different from the way a parliamentary system of government chooses a prime minister. Another difference is that there are only two important political parties in the United States: the Democrats, who are traditionally liberal or progressive, and the Republicans, who are more conservative. In parliamentary systems, there may be a number of significant political parties that must agree to form a government, while in the United States this is not the case. The president, the representatives, and the senators are all chosen by the American citizens in elections.

11. Because the elections of the president and members of the two houses of Congress are separate from each other, it is quite possible in the American system to have the leader of one political party win the presidency while the other major political party wins a majority of the seats in Congress. Thus, the Republicans may control one house, while the Democrats may control the other. During the late 1900s, while most of the presidents were Republican, the Democrats often controlled one or both of the houses of Congress. In 1994, the reverse happened: While Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president, the Republicans won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Then in the early 2000s, for a time, the Republican Party controlled the presidency (George W. Bush) and both houses of Congress. The presidency of Barack Obama (a Democrat) has again seen divided government; after the first two years, in both of his terms the House was controlled by the Republicans, and the Senate was controlled by Democrats.

12. In order to understand what is happening in Washington, it is important to know not only the party of the president, but also which parties control the House and the Senate. Because both the House of Representatives and the Senate must agree on all legislation before it goes to the president, legislation may pass one house but be blocked in the other. Furthermore, the party in control of the House or Senate has the potential of changing every two years. Members of the House of Representatives are elected for two-year terms, while senators serve six-year terms. The Senate terms are staggered5) so that only one-third of the senators run for re-election each time the House elections are held, every two years. 13. Presidential elections are held every four years, on the first Tuesday in November. When the Constitution was written, the founding fathers had a disagreement about how the president should be elected. Some did not want the members of Congress to choose the president, and others were afraid to leave the choice entirely to the voters. The result was a compromise — the electoral college, a system for indirectly electing the president. The system persists today. In presidential elections, people are actually voting for representatives called electors, and it is these electors who officially choose the president. With the electoral college system, the winner of the plurality (the highest number) of each state's popular votes gets all of that state's electoral votes, in most cases. (There are several exceptions.) The number of each state's electoral votes is equal to the total number of their representatives in the House and the Senate. Though the number of electoral votes varies according to each state's population, it is still possible for a person to be elected president without getting the highest number of the popular, or individual, votes.

14. Although Americans were aware of the electoral college system, the average voter did not give it much thought until the election of 2000. There had been only three previous instances of presidents ever losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote, and it seemed a remote possibility. The last time it had happened was in 1888, when Benjamin Harrison won the presidency, even though Grover Cleveland had the majority of popular votes. All through the 1900s, the presidents who were elected had won at least a plurality (the highest number of the popular votes), in addition to winning the electoral votes. However, in the election of 2000, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, won more popular votes than George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, but Bush won the most electoral votes and became president. (In the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, the electoral college was not an issue, because Bush won both the popular vote and the electoral vote.) 15. The result of the election of 2000 sent shock waves through the American political system. One reason was that the vote was incredibly close, and several states had to count their votes a second time. The state with the most controversial results was Florida, where the governor of the state was Jeb Bush, George W. Bush's brother. Although Gore had won the popular vote nationwide, whoever won the twenty-five Florida electoral votes would win the election. The recounts of the votes in Florida showed Bush winning by fewer than 1,000 votes out of almost six million votes cast. After a series of legal challenges, the U.S. Supreme Court decided about a month after the election that the Florida state legislature had the right to stop recounting the ballots and certify the electoral votes. The Supreme Court ruled that a state has the ultimate right to determine how its electors are chosen.