The Brand New Respectful Presidential Campaign Thread

anneshirley · July 2008

Jay, About Nader (you may not read this if you're off to Italy today) but . . . Unfortunately, now that he's run so many years, he's no longer a viable candidate. He's become more of a protest candidate that Greens and others on the left can vote for in protest. But protest candidates rarely get enough votes to make a difference in our system, although Nader did make a difference in 2000 (and, unfortunately, not a good one). But I'd love to see an independent run who has an actual chance in the general. It would have to be someone like Bloomberg, who is known generally in the country and has the money to run without help from lobbyists, etc. Now that the Supreme Court did away with the millionaire penalty, it even has some legs. There was talk of him running as an independent (and talk that Chuck Hagel had asked him to run as his VP) but that faded away.

I thnk the only way we'll get a viable independent party is for it to start slowly and build over ten years or so. I think it's good for the country. We have only two ways to vote now, and lately it seems the Democrats are not much different from the Republicans (think Jim Webb, from Virginia). Two more parties would be even better, one to the left ot the Democrats and one that moves to the middle. What we don't need is what happens in Italy. I was doing some research recently and found that it has 100 parties on the left. I have no idea how many on the right, but they're always having elections when a coalition breaks down.

Beesie--how many parties do you have in Canada?

Beesie · July 2008

Anneshirley,

To your question, we have a long list of parties in Canada (how about the Marijuana Party of Canada?) but in terms of viable parties, in federal elections it's down to 4 and in fact the Prime Minister is always going to be from one of two majors, either the Conservatives (right) or the Liberals (middle-left). The difference vs. the U.S. is that the 2 smaller parties, the NDP (New Democractic Party - far left) and the Bloc Quebecois (regional from Quebec), both usually have enough seats in the federal parliament to make it interesting. Right now the Conservatives have a minority government, which means that to stay in power, for each initiative they need to align with at least one of the other parties. So it makes for some interesting bedfellows.

While Canadian politicians are of no higher quality than what we've been seeing lately in the U.S., I do think that our system works pretty well. Personally I really like minority governments because it forces the party in power to consider the interests of the other parties. This means that nothing too extreme can be forced on the people and more of the interests of the people are represented and addressed. I think minority governments and the parliamentary system can be a problem if there were too many small parties representing narrow special interest groups and each of them has leverage but fortunately that isn't the case here. Recent polls show that the Green Party is coming on strong lately, but adding them to the mix wouldn't be a bad thing. In any case, even if they get 10% of the vote in the next election, I don't think they'd get more than a couple of seats in Parliament, so they wouldn't have any influence.

One other thing that I like about the parliamentary system, and that I simply don't understand about the U.S. system, is the difference in how the Cabinet is formed. We have a Cabinet just like the U.S. does, with similar roles, but the difference is that the major Cabinet Ministers are elected members of parliament, meaning that they are ultimately responsible to their constituents and can be voted out. The Cabinet is carefully formed to ensure that all areas of the country are represented. It's not a gathering of the Prime Minister's best buddies, which is how the U.S. system seems to be set up, with the Cabinet being selected by the President. In both our countries, the Cabinet is pretty powerful and Cabinet members frequently represent our countries around the world. I just don't get that in the U.S. these are people who are in no way accountable to voters.

anneshirley · July 2008

Thanks Beesie. Informative post, and for some reason I never thought about your last point. It's a good one. If the cabinet only answers to the president, then there really is no accountability--at least for four years. It seems that coalitions are at work in most countries, although they can become problematic when the coalition falls apart and the government falls, as happens so often in Italy. But generally they work and it does keep the party in power on edge, which is usually good. Thanks again.

anneshirley · July 2008

Where's Shirley? I haven't seen any posts from Shirley of late, and she's usually pretty regular. Shirley, if you're there, hope you okay.

The Brand New Respectful Presidential Campaign Thread

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