historical thoughts

[swan_tower]

I'm randomly on Wikipedia, reading the entry on the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it's sparking some interesting thoughts.

I suspect Americans have a hard time grokking the UK system of government because to us, it looks kind of haphazard. The government of the United States was designed; if you sit down with the Constitution and read the first three or four Articles, you know more or less how we work. The UK Constitution isn't even a document; it's a collection of documents and conventions and general force of habit, accumulated over the centuries. You could graphically represent the difference by putting maps of Washington, D.C. and central London next to each other. One of these was planned; the other happened by accident.

So you can't easily say who the first Prime Minister was, because nobody ever sat down and created the office. Walpole kind of was, in terms of the power he held, but people fought about the term for over a hundred years, and apparently no two lists of PMs are alike, because the criteria for inclusion vary. It's interesting to me, though, that the office grew out of the Treasury. I suspect -- and this is probably me re-inventing the wheel of some Marxist branch of historical study -- that you can view the growth of modern democracy as a process wherein the root of political power shifted from control of armed force to the control of money. (And there's probably an interesting comparison in there somewhere, between the West and Third World military dictatorships. I'm beginning to feel like I ought to have majored in history after all.)

It makes me realize, too -- given the season we're in right now, over here in the U.S. -- how amazingly stable our government has been. I don't hold with whatever dude it is who declared that history's over, that we've arrived at the final, triumphant form of government; democracy on this scale is still the new kid on the political block, and might not have as much staying power as that guy thinks. There are dynasties that lasted longer than the United States of America. But when I compare the succession of U.S. presidents with that of monarchies or Prime Ministers, it's kind of impressively . . . boring. In a good way. The biggest weirdnesses we have are: FDR with his four terms; Grover Cleveland with his non-consecutive terms; a small handful of male relatives who occupied the same office. A couple of assassinations and deaths in office, whereupon their successors picked up and kept going. And the Civil War, but even then, all that happened politically was that part of the country seceded and formed its own country. I don't think we've ever had, say, two rival Presidents running around, both claiming their Cabinet and Congress are the real ones. Or anything to even approach the Wars of the Roses.

(Yes, most of my comparisons are to British history. For obvious reasons. But I've studied other countries, too.)

(Okay, my brain just offered up Emperor Norton. Who is entertaining, but not exactly mainstream American history.)

So, yeah. As contentious as our elections have been lately, and as freaked out as some people are by the possibility of a black man* leading our country, on the whole? We still have an awfully rational and stable thing going on over here.

I have other, unrelated political thoughts to post, but it occurs to me that if I put them here, one half of the post or the other will probably get all the attention in the comments, so I'll save it for a separate entry later on.


*By which we signify a half-Kenyan black, half-Kansas white guy born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia. Don't you love how modern American society still boils everything down to one-word reductionist evaluations of skin shade?

Comments

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I just read a post about party transitions over the course of the Republic a couple of weeks ago. Haven't validated the info beyond what's there, but it made sense to me. It's here (http://conwayscorner.blogspot.com/2008/10/this-sums-it-up-nicely.html).

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Interesting link, and ideas about the Dems making a more coherent "big tent". I hadn't known Hagel basically endorsed Obama.

That said, as he said there's a lot of infrastructure involved; retrenchment seems more likely than total disintegration. The Democrats managed to go from the party of slavery and Jim Crow to the party of equality.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Hagel is at the top of the growing list of "Vichy Republicans." The more rabid parts of the party HATE him. (Me, I respect him for it. But I'm a Democrat.)

And yes, some of them really are calling people Vichy Republicans. Which, like all comparisons to Hitler, shows that the people throwing that term around have absolutely no sense of perspective.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Interesting! It's definitely the neocon/paleocon/theocon/corporate-con fissures that make me wonder about the future of the Republican party. So long as you had the money of the corporate cons married to the ability of theocons to get the rank and file to the voting booth, they were a force to be reckoned with (and provided power for the neocons to carry out their agenda), but increasingly those two groups seem deeply unhappy with each other. And without that alliance, their power disintegrates: the theocons don't have the money, and the corporate cons don't have the numbers.

My guess -- thanks to those institutional forces your link nods to -- is that we're more likely to see some group (probably the theocons) hive off into a minority third party like the Greens, while some kind of rejuvenation morphs the remainder into a new and more viable form under the same name. In other words, more or less the creation of a new party, but still calling themselves Republicans. (Which is, as I understand it, kind of what happened to the Democratic Party between the Civil War days and now. Same name, substantially different agenda.)

That article makes a good point that we effectively do our coalition-building before elections instead of after. That put into focus for me the otherwise baffling difference between our resolutely two-party system and, well, practically any other country.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, other countries have few-party dominance too; we're just the worst, probably because of criss-crossing domains, vs. just having one layer of districts or ridings which allows for regional variation (but each district likely having two parties.)

Apart from Canada which seems to have a marked lack of the most elementary strategic voting, so the Conservatives could win a district with 36% of the vote.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by "criss-crossing domains"? State and federal elections? I don't personally see that reinforcing the two-party system nearly so much as, say, the winner-take-all setup of the electoral college does. Makes it hard to be anything like a viable third-party candidate in a presidential election. If you don't capture any electoral votes, you look like you're playing a cute game, and your party doesn't gain credibility.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Winner-take-all is the basic driver of having a two-party system. But in the UK you could have districts where the two parties are Labor and Conservative, and others where they're Labor and Liberal Democrat, and there's nothing obviously driving further simplification. In the US we might have that at the House level... but then some state with three parties among its districts would be having statewide elections for Senate (and governor, and EC) which favors just two big parties at that level. That's the main thing I was thinking of.

Winner-take-all mayoral races for cities, too.

And state legislative districts might overlap multiple Congressional districts, though I'm not sure what effect that'd have.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

The Electoral College has an effect, but there's a lot of other things keeping a third party out of the Presidency.

First off, they wouldn't have any default group of Congresscritters in either house with loyalty to them or their platform. A third party President would both have a very difficult time getting their agenda through Congress and have to devote a *lot* more time to building individual alliances there.

Most of the significant third parties in the last century have been built around a cult of personality (with a side order of causes); Teddy Roosevelt, George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, to a lesser degree the Dixiecrats. They don't establish an actual party base to work with when the individual goes away.

There's also a lot of things now legislated into the system that work against third parties, such as requirements for getting on the ballot in the first place, money which goes to parties/candidates who are expected to be able to influence the system, etc. It's also the case that, in general, both parties can't stray too far from the center since there are only two of them. But that means they'll generally appeal to more people than parties further from the center, weakening the chances of those parties. You've also got around 30-40% of the populace for each party that will just automatically vote for that party barring them putting up a Nazi symbol festooned inanimate object as the candidate (note that Bush still has a +20% approval rating).

Personally, I think the best chance for a "new party" is to start at ground level with state and local candidates that gradually work their way up the ranks to take over one of the existing parties. This is pretty much what happened with the Republicans over the last 40 years, and they're in prime shape to have it happen again.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I only meant the electoral college to be one example of a factor acting against third parties; certainly there are a lot more.

I kind of agree about how a new party might start; if you get one achieving power in a state legislature, they might be able to launch themselves on a larger scale, or else just take over power in an existing party.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"20%"
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/01/repost-crazification-factor.html

Another thing would be to specialize in targetting uncontested elections, where the D or R don't have a candidate. Those are often safeish seats, but a 3rd party might be able to get traction.

Or there'd be the extortion effect: "give us a bone or we'll run as a spoiler", for at least having influence. Doesn't work if no one votes for you, though.

[dr_whom]

This is the way the Working Families Party works in New York, in which it's legal for multiple parties to nominate the same candidate. Basically, they endorse the Democratic candidate if the candidate has sufficiently labor-friendly policies; otherwise they may refrain from endorsing or nominate a spoiler candidate; and they use this to pressure Democrats into supporting their platform. A few years ago they endorsed a Republican for state senate who had worked particularly hard to raise the minimum wage. I think there are other minor parties in New York that work the same way.