It’s times like this as we have just finished a federal election and are entering a provincial one that I am happy to live in a parliamentary democracy as opposed to the presidential system the United States has been increasingly floundering with lately.

When I watch what has become a circus of ineffectiveness in the US as partisan politics immobilizes the country I am thrilled to death for the good old boring parliamentary system. Don’t get me wrong – we here in Canada have the same level of partisan petty politics as anywhere but it does not grind the entire nation to a halt and essentially turn our leaders (however much we may or may not hate them) into lame ducks as it seems to have done south of the border.

I have a theory.

I wonder perhaps if, in this time of global tumult and economic crisis, the fact that our system of governance has had nearly 800 years to mature makes any difference. On June 15, 1215 old King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta on the plains of Runymede near the Thames River outside of London by angry Lords who sought to reign in a corrupt and power abusing monarch effectively launching what would eventually become the parliamentary system of governance we know today.

The presidential system, however much Americans would like to tout it’s inspiration as being rooted in ancient Greece is really only a little over 200 years old…is still in the tumultuous years of youth as far as history is concerned and possibly still an experiment.

Like Canadian football the parliamentary system is agile, relatively fast to pass (legislation) in comparison to other models. Sure it doesn’t have some of the same entertainment value that comes with the blunt, big, war-like cousin to the south but what it lacks in pure violence it makes up for in strategy and pure movement.

The agility of our system is a direct result of what Canadians often moan about – the fact that we do not vote for the executive branch independently from our legislative. Our executive and legislative are tied together to the degree that a majority ruling party can get quite a lot done with little in the way of filibustering opposition but still has the check of the Senate (which thankfully looks like it will move toward an elected model).

By contrast a president is elected independent of the party which means that the American people can, should they choose, put in place a leader that nobody – Republican or Democrat – wants to work with. In this instance the state is essentially headless and a power vacuum ensues with all the political manoeuvring (backstabbing, pandering) that is bound to occur as a result.

The scary thing about such circumstances is that it takes a crisis of enormous scale to force cooperation in a presidential democracy floundering in such a vacuum. It took 9/11 to solidify near monarch-like support behind George W. Bush in 2001 but what that created was not a democracy so much as a feartocracy which the country is now attempting to extricate itself from.

When Bush entered office he did so with a 50 percent approval rating (reflecting the divisive nature of the election). After 9/11 his ratings soared to an unprecedented 92 percent in October 2001 eventually falling to 19 percent when he left office.

The point is, in a system that elects it’s executive independent of its legislative branch politicians are forced into unnatural positions for the sake of re-election when crisis inflates their popularity to an unrealistic high. It effectively eliminates virtually every check and balance in place and writes a blank cheque for one person ruling the most powerful country in the world.

The irony of course is that it was the American disdain of the parliamentary system and the associated  figurehead of the monarch that essentially put in place a system that centralizes power in one presidential individual – sometimes to the degree where they have more power than the very monarch they were fleeing and leading to all the same abuses.

It is no surprise given the current circumstances that the American Tea Party movement has picked up steam recently. They carry essentially the same platform the original American Revolutionaries carried only now it is directed against their own presidential system instead of a monarchy.

All that to say I am pleased with our parliamentary system which focuses power on no particular individual or office (and don’t try to tell me the monarch has all the power in our system because we all know that is not a reality).

Just some thoughts on governance.