Good day citizens and welcome to What Would Jefferson do?

Our weekly opportunity to discuss current American events

with President Thomas Jefferson, who is seated across from me now. Good day to you, Mr. President. President, Ben Plutta. He writes, during our recent government shutdown, I read an article saying that our political

system looks dysfunctional from the perspective of Europe, China, Canada, and some other parts of the world.

Although a shutdown may be a little extreme and chaotic,

perhaps it is actually good for democracy

when the minority party is able to check and balance

the president and or majority party.

What is your view on this, Mr. Jefferson? the president and or majority party.

What is your view on this Mr Jefferson and were there ever any types of

government shutdowns during your time sir?

There were not.

We had a tiny government, especially a tiny national government in my era, and we never

thought of shutting it down.

But I will say that the founding fathers who created the Constitution wanted it to be a slow-moving

engine, that there would be enough checks and balances and redundancies as it distilled the will of the people

that nothing would happen very fast. So the House of Representatives, which is elected every second year,

might be volatile in the face of some domestic or international emergency and might be tempted to do something that was unwise.

That's why the Senate was created as a counterbalance as a second way of thinking

about certain issues, a second means of distilling the will of the people, so

things would slow down a little and there would need to be something

like deliberation and something approaching consensus before any bill was passed

...