RE THE PROBLEM OF REFORM AND THE PROBLEM OF SUCCESSION

Watching Garrett Fagan's lectures last night, on the Imperial period of the Roman Empire, the 100s AND 200s AD, (before the advent of Roman Christianity), 


and reading David Kaiser's current post,


I was struck by analogies between the ubiquitous 'problem of imperial succession', and problems of 'reform' which all regimes face in one or another way, or ways, with the passage of time, and changes in circumstances both internal and external. 


If one looks at the 'decline' of the Roman Republic, one can survey a period lasting 100 years, from 134 to say 31 BC.


The American political system, existing for a shorter period, has been stubbornly resilient, as vested political systems quickly become, and fairly resistant to needed structural reforms, in my judgment.   


Often, it seems, a need for structural political reform is, at least temporarily, 'solved', or perhaps only 'masked over', by expedients, innovations, taken by an authority figure, say an FDR. 

The Civil War, itself, an expression of structural flaws, an expression of needed structural reforms, in some ways a great  'masking over', although it did conclude certain issues, at least for our time.


The American Presidency, itself, is a classic example of a political office notoriously ill suited, within the existing framework, for most of the kinds of tasks either heaped upon it, offered to it, or denied to it, within the American political system.