Matt McCarten on presidential systems
At the tail-end of his article on MMP in the Herald on Sunday, Matt McCarten had this to say about a US-style presidential system:
The first democratic country - the United States - has a written
constitution that is interpreted by a political partisan-appointed
Supreme Court. Then there's a lower house and an upper house. Budgetary
items and political appointments such as ambassadors and judges have to
be voted on by the Senate with, it seems, at least a 60 per cent vote.
To manage the country, the president appoints a Cabinet made up of
non-elected members.Consequently that country's politics are gridlocked. Compared with that, MMP serves us well.
While McCarten's criticism is partially valid (there's plenty of examples of bi-partisanship in the US, much more so than in parliamentary democracies), he doesn't highlight the worst aspect of the presidential system: a lack of accountability. By separating the legislature from the executive arms of government, accountability between the two is much harder to achieve. A Prime Minister can be removed by the head of state through a vote of no confidence in Parliament, or by his or her own caucus replacing them as leader, or by losing a general election. A president in the US presidential system can only be removed through the glacially slow impeachment process. Moreover, a Prime Minister often has to face up to the opposition through debates in parliament and Question Time. US Presidents get a free run most of the time.
Printer-friendly version
Send by email
Comments
A little under half of the framers of the US constitution were constitutional monarchists (after all, Alexander Hamilition claimed "limited monarchy is the best system of government in the world"). To compromise between a limited monarchy but at the same time to ensure that "ambition counteracts ambition", the US Presidency become an effectively 'indirectly elected monarch' (due to the countries federalist makeup) - with strong checks and balances - i.e. approval by the Senate for various officials, the judiciary, two Houses of Congress.
Curiously, John McCain said he would have introduced QT had he been elected President
That's right. Shame Obama didn't take him up on that and do the same. Oh well.
This post has started an interesting discussion on our Facebook page, particularly in light of the most recent Democracy Index - once again parliamentary democracies are on top.
The Democracy Index is a joke - Iceland, for example, is ranked 2nd - yet despite 95.5% of the population rejecting the proposal to pay debts to Swedish and British bankers, the government persisted in paying them anyways! So much for democracy! Equally, most Norwegians rely heavily on their government, and cannot overrule their own Parliament. None of this is considered in the "Democracy" index. What non-sense.
As I said, I challenege anyone to disprove to me that Switzerland is the ONLY democracy in the world -
I don't think they measure the "delta" between what the people what and what their politicians do...
Post new comment