What mechanism stops any President from constantly vetoing bills? You have a situation now where most of the lawmakers are in favour of something, yet don't number enough to override the veto and Congress seems set, if it acts at all, on submitting another version knowing that will be vetoed. The President could effectively stop any bill until, if ever, the lawmakers did his bidding, that is blackmail them into making any bill so feeble that it is ineffectual or dragoon them into a bill they don't really want. Or he could stop the whole process of lawmaking by signalling that he'd veto every single bill he saw.

Plainly this does not always happen; there's a bill now concerning water which has resulted in an override; but what stops it happening? A President might act like some Roman emperor, who could listen attentively to what his senate said, and then do either what he wanted or refuse what they wished, or like some English kings, who might so act with their parliaments. (Only two of them made the mistake of pushing their luck with an effective parliament that was tougher, better armed, and better supported by public opinion than they were Two Stuarts were blessed with that lack of judgment).

To an ignorant outsider the system is reminiscent of what critics said about the first Rolls Royce. It was, one pithily said, " A triumph of engineering over design" Yet it works (like a Rolls Royce?)

To the best of my knowledge, nothing stops the president from vetoing every bill. However, most US Senators who have a few terms in regard themselves as more powerful than the president, who is limited to 2 four-year terms. To a lesser extent, most Representatives of over 10 or so years feel the same way. This feeling is there regardless of party affiliation. A president who consistently disregards his own partiy's most powerful leaders soon finds himself very much alone in the White House, like Nixon did. Only junior Representatives and senators will even answer a call to the White House at that point.

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Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
A president who consistently disregards his own partiy's most powerful leaders soon finds himself very much alone in the White House, like Nixon did. Only junior Representatives and senators will even answer a call to the White House at that point.

Well now, substitute 'Prime Minister' for President and you have what happens in Britain.A Prime Minister, however succesful, however many general elections they've won,however many years they've been in the post, is at risk of being removed by their own party. That's what happened to Mrs Thatcher. Two things brought about her downfall. First she was acting, as we say, 'presidentially' By that we mean, that she was set upon doing what she wanted without regard to, or without seeking, the opinions of others in her cabinet, let alone the opinions of her other MPs.She was trying to rule without a cabinet, in effect.She only wanted 'yes men' in it. And when she ejected people from the cabinet who opposed her, all she did was put important, articulate, and resentful enemies on her 'back benches' (the ordinary MPs of her party). These, unfettered by the convention of collective responsibility [that anyone in the cabinet is expected to accept and take responsibility for, all decisions made, whatever their private reservations] were then free to openly attack her, as well as making it known to other MPs and to the media, that they'd prefer another leader. Second, she decided to make a stand for a pet measure of hers which made no sense to much of her party,nor the House nor the electorate.[ This measure was to have local taxes levied per capita on each adult in a household, regardless of the means of the household,rather than on the value of the property they lived in.My mother's gardener, in his tiny cottage, was assessed to more local tax than she was because he had two adult sons at home, so three adults, and she lived alone in her big house worth vastly more.In fact, she got a discount for being sole occupant!She paid all the tax for him, as a gift, seeing it as manifestly unjust].At that point Mrs Thatcher's MPs, seeing protest riots in the streets and well aware that any party approving this was doomed in the polls, so their future was at stake too,were soon minded to throw her out.She was not the first Prime Minister to be driven to resign before being sacked by the party and certainly won't be the very last.

What we have difficulty in understanding is that 'Americans love compromise'. We cannot conceive of a system which not only allows it but positively encourages it.We dread it.We elect a party to govern, not negotiate everything with the other side(s) Any Prime Minister here who found that they did not have a working majority, that they had a 'hung parliament' where no party had control or one where their party outnumbered each of the other parties but not by enough to be confident of getting its bills passed, would promptly call another general election. Their platform in that would be "Look,you gave us more seats than the others but, unfortunately, we cannot do what we want. So go back to the polling booths and give us more seats so we can govern without negotiating with parties so many of you did not vote for". That is almost certain to do the trick: they will win the new election with a workable majority.Then business can resume, as is seen here as normal.The party in power has a manifesto which it will broadly follow, but thereafter sensing any problem or significant differences of opinion during its term, its leaders always consider the views of other MPs in their party on matters of difficulty(not necessarily all and certainly not all equally. Some people are more persuasive, more experienced and more trusted in their judgment by the Prime Minister than others )Any 'compromise' is therefore arrived at within the party.(Mrs Thatcher was reminded, the hard way, what happens if you utterly ignore the concerns of your MPs)