Trumped Part 2A: The shining city on the hill
Now is the time for all voyeurs to come to the aid…
America claims to be “the shining city on the hill” and not without good reason. But a shinning city is about setting an example. That’s a problem. A shinning city is like a house at night with all the lights on, the neighbours can see in, but it’s hard to see out.
I trust my American friends will find the sudden appearance of my flashlight-lit face pressed against their bedroom window mouthing these words helpful.
I ended Trumped: democracy in the Ideas Era with the admonition to non-Americans not to be smug. Authoritarianism is happening everywhere. Trump is a banner not a leader. Like a lizard basking in the morning sun, the raucous crowds and far right media shape his misshapen policies. He doesn’t understand, he just knows it feels good. It is a capital mistake to give him too much credit.
Horses for courses
Is one political system better than another? Well, each has its strengths and weaknesses. It is the threats and opportunities that determine which is best on that day. In this and the next post I argue that America’s political system is particularly vulnerable to the threats of the Ideas Era. Not that parliamentary democracies are invulnerable. Eavesdropping at Tim Horton’s leaves no doubt misinformation and alienation abound here in Canada - but our system – particularly the much maligned first past the post vote, tend to drive the main parties toward the middle, whereas the American system resonates sympathetically with extremism. (We’ll spend more time on this in Part 2B.)
The defining difference between the US and parliamentary democracies is that the Executive sits in parliament and is answerable to it.
For the most part presidents can confine their public utterances to staged, set piece occasions. In their later years Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan hid serious health issues that impaired their ability to perform their duties. Harry Truman is reputed to have said he’d never have agreed to become Vice President if he’d realized how ill FDR was.
In the parliamentary system cognitive tests are administered to prime ministers in public no less often than weekly and sometimes daily. For the uninitiated, here is a sample of prime minister question periods in the UK and Canadian parliaments.
The government and opposition are nose to nose and heckling is part of the test. A thin-skinned bully quickly becomes an object of derision and back benchers, needing a champion to keep their seats, would have forced Joe Biden to step aside much earlier.
Because of the separation of powers Americans were, and will again, be denied the pleasure of seeing Donald Trump handle Question Period. Why did America forgo such wholesome fun?
The preemie constitution
Though I argue that America’s Constitution is showing its age, the example it set in 1791 accelerated the evolution of parliamentary democracy in Britain and its colonies. Ragging on the US Constitution is like ragging on your mom for being older than you. All the same, her driving has become erratic.
In the US it is a given that the Constitution is an American invention that grew sui generis out of the Revolution. Really it was the product of Whig political philosophy prevalent throughout the English speaking world at the time. The revolutionary bit was toppling the King and the Westminster Parliament. Initially the colonial institutions carried on more or less as before.1
(Edit, Nov 18, 2:54 pm) I just finished reading Dan Gardiner’s Bits and Bobs post yesterday where he makes the same point about the US Revolution. Two things: 1. I am fan of his. Had I seen his yesterday I’d have credited him in mine. 2. You should subscribe to it too.
The new national institutions of the Constitution were built - monarchy aside - on the British pattern. Britain had a legislative branch with two houses, an executive branch, and an independent judiciary. So it was in “revolutionary” America. Architecturally they stuck to the unwritten British constitution, as it was at the time.
The problem is they wrote it down.2 They had to, given size of the country they were trying to build. But that locked in a system that would continue to evolve elsewhere in the British Empire.
1791 and all that…
In 1791 the priority was controlling the state, which was not only the biggest thing; it was the only big thing.3 Hence the separation of powers. Any sensible person would want to distribute power amongst two chambers, the judiciary, and the executive. Nothing is as threatening to an 18th Century thinker as the government.
The American political system is well set up to constrain bad government but only because it is well setup to constrain government.
The rise of responsible government
America built its system on advanced 18th Century political theory. The form of parliamentary democracy called responsible government is built on 19th century political practice.
It may be no coincidence that responsible government evolved in the 1850s at the same time as large corporations were emerging to run the new railways, energy and insurance companies, and steel plants.4 The world was beginning to shrink as steamships, ironclads, and telegraph poles rolled over the horizon.
Government was no longer the only big thing.
Of course the US, insulated as it is by two oceans, weaker neighbours, and its immensity, could ignore world shrinkage longer than less fortunately situated countries. But the Twentieth Century put paid to that.
Our world is awash in powerful countries and corporations with more power than most countries. Elon Musk stands ready to pull apart the government he depends on and clearly does not understand. (Inexplicably he seems to have disregarded my advice in Elon, Run Your Business Like a Government.)
We need government to get things done and be accountable for it.
Get’ er done or get out
Above all, responsible government is pragmatic. Power is fused instead of separated, the executive is not only accountable to the legislative branch (hence “responsible”), it is composed of members of its largest party. Most times the executive can use its majority to eventually get its way. But the executive “controls” the House only so long as it enjoys the support of the House. Defeat on a money bill is the end of the government. And, the executive knows it won’t be in power for more than five years and probably less so its supporters in the House always have an eye for the next election they will face.
There are important consequential differences between American and parliamentary democracy. While responsible government gives the executive branch the power for which it is accountable, a President hamstrung by Congress still gets blamed.
The President serves a fixed term and removal requires impeachment (and we’ve seen how well that works). In the parliamentary system, the government must face the House and maintain its support.5
The President is nationally elected, cabinet members are selected and owe their legitimacy and posh jobs entirely to the President. Prime ministers are the leader of the largest party but only elected by their constituency just as the cabinet members are, meaning they have political legitimacy too. Admittedly the collective culture this used to encourage has deteriorated thanks to personality politics. Nevertheless, prime ministers owe their position to the members who support them, not the other way around.
In the parliamentary system the opposition is the government in waiting, eager to take over at any time it can muster a majority of the House. The public knows what the alternative is.
Two Houses divided cannot stand each other
The other evolution America missed is the practice, since 1911, that the upper house is “a chamber of sober second thought” that must eventually give way to the elected lower house. Again, a pragmatic rule that recognizes that government must be able to get things done.
Horses for courses redux
As was said, each system has its strengths and weaknesses. With Trump reentering the White House, the theory of division of powers is comforting. The question playing out right now with Trump’s appointments is how the 18th Century’s Newtonian clockwork Constitution will fare in the quantum world of Donald Trump. Distributing powers is fatuous if enough people in the other branches submit to one petulant controlling mind.
Credit Salon.com “What Happens When a Narcissist Loses? https://www.salon.com/2020/10/28/trump-narcissism-psychology-election-loss-pathology-personality-disorders/
Rabbits won’t sit still
I start writing every post sure of the rabbit I will pull out of the hat only to get my head stuck in the rabbit hole. I promised a Part 2 to Trumped: democracy in the Ideas Era. and this is it. It’s called Part 2A because I keep my promises but the post was too long so next we have:
With luck there will be no Part 2C.
In New York, for example, “The Fourth Provincial Congress met in White Plains on July 9, 1776 to consider the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 and unanimously adopted a resolution “that the reasons assigned by the Continental Congress for declaring the United Colonies free and independent states are cogent and conclusive, and that, while we lament the cruel necessity which has rendered that measure unavoidable, we approve the same, and will, at the risk of our lives and fortunes, join with the other colonies in supporting it.” The next day, the Fourth Provincial Congress became the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York. It set up a committee to draft a State Constitution and requested all magistrates and judges to exercise their respective offices under the authority and in the name of the State of New York.” – The Historical Society of New York
Written in 1787 and adopted 1791.
The Catholic Church being out of favour in America and Britain at the time.
The executive cannot avoid parliament,
“It concluded that prorogation would be unlawful if it “has the effect, of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the power of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive”. It found that proroguing for five weeks, rather than the normal four to five days, in the run-up to the major constitutional change on 31 October was unlawful. It therefore quashed the Order in Council, meaning prorogation never happened.” Institute for Government prorogation. The decision is here: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-judgment.pdf