Would you rather your political party control the White House or Congress?

[Tama]

What will they do with the old one?

[TheHuckster]

I'd love it if they'd preserve it as a sort of museum. Possibly as an exhibit at the Smithsonian or something. Chances are, at least in the near term, they'll probably simply keep it as a backup.

[s_stabeler]

Today that is certainly true but what I was talking about was how it got started for the US back in 1800. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there were a whole lot of democratic countries back then (technically though we're a republic rather than a democracy). After all the whole reason we broke away from Great Britain (1801 is when they became the UK) was that back then King George III still had the final say on things...as opposed to the constitutional monarchy where the monarch just "smiles and waves" (okay I know there's a bit more to it than that but now it's the House of Commons and especially the Prime Minister and his/her ruling party that truly holds the chips).

not exactly. the reasons are complicated, but they can be summarized as the American Colonies were sick and tired of having decisions about them being made on another continent. ( the overt reason was that, having run up quite a bit of debt defending the American Colonies in the Seven years War, the British wanted the Americans to pay for the debt by actually enforcing Customs taxes- even though said taxes were actually being CUT. Then there were protests, troops were sent to suppress said protests, and it snowballed from there. ( it's why there was a serious suggestion at first of having what was functionally an American king as head of State when thye were drawing up the Articles of Confederation.)