an autodidact meets a dilettante…

I don’t care if they respect me, so long as they fear me.

Caligula

Canto: Here’s a thing, I recently heard a politico-legal pundit – I think it was Chuck Rosenberg, but I may be wrong, I’m trying to track it down – say on MSNBC, a favourite site of mine these days, that ‘we’ (i.e. the American people) ‘don’t get rid of our Leader lightly, unlike the UK, who can dispose of theirs by a simple vote of no-confidence by the Leader’s party’. That was the gist of what he said – it’s a summary, not a direct transcript – and it made me fall off my chair laughing and crying. It was very clear to me that the notion that you shouldn’t be able to dump the boy-king easily was an advantage of the Great American System of the Presidency (GASP), was Total Effing Bullshit (TFB). It took me quite some to get over this piece of tomfoolery.

Jacinta: Ah yes, well that requires a bit of explanation and comparison of the two systems. It’s amusing that the Westminster system of government, derived of course from the UK but utilised with variants in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and with even more variants in other major nations such as India, Japan, Israel and Malaysia, was actually the basis of the GASP. But in some ways that 18th century Westminster system has since moved way ahead of the GASP, in that the parliament has become far more powerful, and the constitutional monarchy, upon which the constitutional presidency was based, has withered away to playing a purely ceremonial role. To me that’s good, as maintaining a monarchy has preserved a lot of history – good and bad – and it’s generally good for tourism, as long as they behave themselves.

Canto: Yes the royal we’s are probably generating more income for the country than what it costs to keep them, as long as they don’t multiply and extend the family too much. 

Jacinta: This is the thing – the difference between the two systems is vast. The Americans talk about Coequal Branches of Government (CBG) as the basis of GASP, whereas under Westminster, it’s all one – the Parliament. And the Prime Minister’s role and general position is nothing like that of the President/King. The key is in the title, prime, or first, minister. Primum inter pares, first among equals, the captain of the team. If the USA adopted a similar system they’d be far better off – their current PM would be Nancy Pelosi, their previous one, Paul Ryan, and there would be no President, unless they wanted a ceremonial one. There’d be half the number of elections, or even less depending on which Westminster system they adopted (the UK holds national elections every five years, the USA every two, at great expense and to the detriment of long-term planning and development). The Senate could act as a brake upon the House, though sometimes one party would hold power in both chambers, for good or ill. The PM would of necessity be a team player – imagine if she said to a journalist ‘don’t talk about them – I’m the team’. Her party would drop her like a hot spud. 

Canto: Yes, the reason dumping the President/King would be so traumatic, not to say bothersome, is that he has so much effing power. Power to shut down the government, power to pardon miscreants, special executive powers, veto powers, power to fill dozens of administrative posts with his cronies…

Jacinta: Or to leave them vacant, apparently. And power to select his running mate, who will automatically take over if he gets thrown under a bus or drowns in his own bile – again a vastly inferior situation to that under Westminster, where the ousted PM has no say whatever in deciding her own successor. The team’s the thing, the team the team, whereas with the GASP, it’s the superhero individual, the Great Leader, the Portentous POTUS, the Commander-in-Chief and other vainglorious assininities. It’s so typically macho, and American. 

Canto: And while we’re pouring on the scorn, It’s in all their worst movies – Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone defying the odds, fighting corruption, saving the state, getting the gal, etc. In fact, this was the essential campaign message of their swamp-draining princeling, which gained him the Kingdom, with much help from the Russian cyber-army. 

Jacinta: And the funny/sad thing is that even the mainstream media – and the experts they bring in, the lifetime lawyers, the intelligence folk, the career civil servants, the historians and on – are so jingoistic, so unself-critical about the GASP, that they blame everything on the boy-king himself – who’s just a boy after all – and have nothing constructive to say about the horrendous GASP. 

Canto: Yes it’s funny, in a grotesque way, to hear many of them say ‘this isn’t a dictatorship’ and ‘he’s not a king’, which nobody ever has to say under the Westminster system…

Jacinta: Under which it would be impossible for this boy-king to rise to absolute power, because their palaces, those of the Westminster nations, are reserved strictly for ceremonial presidents and governors. No power, just lots of fancy architecture and portraiture…

Canto: And lovely gardens.

Jacinta: And garden parties.

Canto: And quaint hats and uniforms. 

Jacinta: And marching bands.

Canto: And many-gun salutes.

Jacinta: And the blowing of purely ceremonial whistles.

Canto: But there are other reasons why this particular princeling, or any other like him, wouldn’t make any headway under Westminster. There are no head-to-head federal elections. Of course, in every particular electorate, there’s usually, but not always, one major candidate of the left pitted against one major candidate of the right, but to get to be Prime Minister, you not only have to win that electorate, you have to win the confidence of the party you’re a member of, by displaying some sort of leadership skills, as well as policy smarts, a certain je ne sais quois charisma, and an ability to unite and inspire a team. And you’ll be expected to sit alongside your team, make speeches in front of your team, while facing the jeers and tough questions of the team sitting directly opposite you, within spitting distance, for every day that parliament sits. No white palace for you, no courtiers, and no immunity. If you go rogue, if you start claiming you’re the team and stuff the rest, you’ll be thrown out the door before you get a chance to open it. 

Jacinta: You might say we can work our political system without a single GASP. 

Canto: Which leaves the question – do you think the American powers-that-be, once they’ve managed to rid themselves of the spoilt boy-king, will ever reform the GASP into a more distributed and effective system?

Jacinta: Very little chance. Will they stop making superhero movies? Very little chance. Will they solve the problem of anti-government fetishism and and fantasies of self-made individualism? Very little chance. Even though the reign of this particular boy-king is likely to end, IMHO, in something memorably horrific – because this boy-king would rather lock himself up in the white palace toilet than go quietly, don’t expect the Americans to come up with a better GASP. They just don’t have it in them, I’m sad to say.

Canto: Well, I want to be more optimistic, but we shall see. We remain watchful ghouls for the foreseeable.