Through a Parliamentary Lens

By no means every four years but every now and ten, I can’t help but to ponder what politics might be like in the United States if we had a parliamentary democracy. In such a system the de facto “executive” is the Prime Minister. Technically only parties compete, not individuals. The leader of the party with the majority of votes becomes Prime Minister—and if no majority is achieved by any party, a coalition government is formed from two or more parties; the leader of the largest piece becomes PM.

Curious that. The public does not directly vote for the Leader but the leader has real power. In the United States, the Leader is a major celebrity by definition but may have no genuine power to carry out his or her agenda—if House or Senate are in opposition hands.

Looked at through a Parliamentary Lens, we now have five parties contending for rule in the United States: The Democratic Party (DP) headed by Hilary Clinton, the Sanders Progressive Party (SPP) led by Bernie Sanders, the Great Donald Party (GDP) lead by Donald Trump, the Grand Old Party (GOP) led by Paul Ryan, and the Libertarian Party (LP) headed by Johnson Riding. There is also the Green Party, but (as best I can determine) it has no official leader to assume that ultimate title of Commander in Chief.

Now if, instead of electing Electors in November we were electing members of parliament (MPs), the likely outcome would be the following (in order of number of seats won):

DP

SPP or GDP

GOP

LP

None would have an absolute majority. If the SPP came in second, DP could easily form a Coalition Government with Bernie Sanders naming secretaries for Treasury, Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services and Hilary Clinton selecting the secretaries of the other major departments. If Donald’s GDP won second place, the Democrats would still rule by aligning with SPP. Not any year, of course, but certainly this year. This year the GOP under Ryan would find it almost impossible to bring about an effective coalition with Donald GDP. Donald doesn’t do coalitions.

This outcome would be neat because, for the next six years or so the DP-SPP coalition would have absolute power to legislate its program—and therefore try out its policies in the actual world. Things would then seem very strange indeed. We’d get genuine change instead of institutionalized paralysis which is out current fate.

Prime Minister Boehner

Suppose that we were a parliamentary democracy. In such a system the chief executive would be the person who controls the House of Representatives. Now it so happens that our current House, in the 113th Congress, as of September of last year, was composed of three parties: the Tea Party, with 48 members, the Republican Party, with 184, and the Democrats, with 200. Looked at in this way, the Democrats are in the majority. After the elections, which produced this result, Nancy Pelosi would have had to form a coalition government. She would have opted for what in Europe they call a Grand Coalition, thus one formed of the two largest parties. Moderate and mainstream Republicans would have been much more acceptable to Pelosi than a lash-up with tea drinkers. The government would have been generally moderate, but in such a situation as prevails today, shutdown and fiscal cliff, the outcome would have been sensible, let us say.

Our current “prime minister” opted for a coalition that isn’t working well at all, thanks to the Hastert Rule under which no legislation is offered for a vote unless the majority of the majority, in this case the Republicans and Tea Party combined, are certain to win the vote. With the Tea Party adamantly opposed to a sensible solution, namely let’s have an operating government and funding for it before we tackle issues of a lesser magnitude, doing the sensible thing threatens Boehner’s role as the de facto PM. If he allows a vote, the sensible solution will pass—but Boehner may not be able to hold on to his job.

Is one man holding up the show? Looks like it to me. The Senate laboring valiantly on a deal suggests an odd situation. I have a terrible case of indigestion—and Brigitte is doing her best to help by taking Alka-Seltzer.