The fear of instituting a new government that would become the very thing they had rebelled against was the motivating factor in the creation of the first US Constitution. A strong central executive was recognized as a threat to personal liberty, so the first framers created a unicameral congress to perform a limited set of federal functions, leaving most authority with the state and local governments. This governing structure was widely believed to give too much power to secessionist and obstructionist local authorities. By concentrating too much power at point 1 on the Asplund Chart, the first US Constitution was leading to a dissolution of the United States into two or more regional confederacies.
The framers then went about devising a system of government that they hoped would tend towards neither dissolution or authoritarianism. What they created was this:
The House of Representatives (Point 2)
The House of Representatives was designed to provide a forum for transformational populism. As the only directly elected members of the federal government, they were expected to be most susceptible to majoritarian excesses. As the most directly accountable body, the House of Representatives was also given the power of the purse.
The Senate (Point 3)
Since Senators were initially appointed by the states, it was assumed that they would guard against the usurpation of local authority by the federal government. Because the Senate gave equal representation to all states regardless of population, it would also provide a check on the more reckless majoritarian impulses of the House of Representatives and act to uphold traditional institutions. The framers also invested significant executive branch oversight functions in the Senate to try to maintain a humble presidency.
Article 2: Executive (Point 4)
The President was invested with the minimum authority the framers thought necessary for a stable union of states. The President's authority was limited mostly to foreign affairs, with some very limited domestic responsibilities.
Article 3: Judicial (Point 1)
The Supreme Court was created mostly to resolve disputes between the states and occasionally between the other two branches. With the adoption of the Bill of Rights, it also became the ultimate guarantor of constitutionally protected personal liberties.
Constitutional Shortcomings
Amendment Process
By requiring super-majorities in Congress to pass a constitutional amendment, the framers guaranteed that only amendments that increase or are neutral with respect to federal authority would be passed. The power to adopt amendments should have been left with state governments and the people directly.
Impeachment
The infrequency of impeachments reflects the unwillingness of all federal elected officials to censure their colleagues through the constitutionally provided process. To be an effective deterrent, the ability to initiate the impeachment process would have to be given to some non-federal authority such as the governors or legislatures of some specified number of states (with significant penalties for bringing spurious charges).
Constitutional Enforcement
The enforcement of constitutional limitations on congressional, executive, and judicial authorities was supposed to be done by each branch acting as a check on the other two. That does not seem to have worked out very well. Since the President appoints Supreme Court Justices with Senate concurrence, there has proven to be a bias towards selecting justices who will interpret the Constitution in a way that accommodates the centralization of decision-making authority at the federal level. This tendency might be partially mitigated by providing a check on federal overreach such as allowing a super-majority of states to remove a Justice who is particularly negligent in enforcing Constitutional limitations on federal authority.
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