The American Constitution: still fit for purpose?

Looking across the “Pond” from the eastern side, one cannot help but be struck by the very different ways in which most European countries and the United States govern themselves. This leads me to wonder if the American Constitution is still fit for purpose.

A fundamental difference of approach

Most European democracies, of which I will take the United Kingdom to be a prime example because it is the one I know best, work on the basic principle that the power of government lies with the political grouping that can command the greatest support in its democratically-elected legislative chamber. In the British system this is the House of Commons. The leader of that political group is therefore the leader of the government.

In the British system, that person (known as the Prime Minister) is not the head of state, because that honour is held by an hereditary monarch who these days wields no political power and, by convention, remains strictly neutral in public whatever they might think in private.

The American system, however, was built with the overriding intention of not allowing the people to fall under “tyranny”, whether from outside or inside. The founding fathers were also keen to build a federal system – the states might be united but they were always going to be states as opposed to counties or districts.

A President with limited power

What this meant was that the figurehead of the United States must not be allowed to act like a monarch or to ride roughshod over the liberties of the individual states. Having freed themselves from the tyranny of a king, the ex-colonists were hardly likely to elect themselves a new tyrant.

It must also be remembered that the original United States Constitution was written at a time before political parties had been established. Every senator and representative was regarded as an independent spokesman of their state or congressional district, and they were not expected to form binding groups of like-minded people from other states who would vote together in blocs that were in general opposition to members who belonged to other blocs. The idea that the will of the President would be permanently supported or opposed, depending on the nature and size of blocs of congressmen, was not something that the founding fathers gave a moment’s thought to.

The net result was that the office of President was set about with “checks and balances” to ensure that he could not do exactly what he might want to do on every occasion. His acts had to be supported by Congress before they could become law, and he likewise had the power of veto over laws that Congress might propose but of which he did not approve.

Where it all goes wrong

The problem with the American system, as I see it, is that politics has got in the way of the Constitution.

Elections for President are predicated on the idea that the winner will be the most powerful person in the country, and that has expanded to becoming “Leader of the Free World”. However, although candidates for the Presidency will make all sorts of promises about how they will transform the country once they get elected, the political system will often make this next to impossible. If Congress is packed with the President’s political opponents – either at the time he is elected or as a result of later elections – he will find himself thwarted at almost every turn and forced to scale back drastically on his original plans which, let us not forget, were probably the reason why the people elected him to office in the first place.

The net result is that the President, who began with such high hopes and expectations, is then held up for ridicule as being weak and indecisive. Even worse, nothing that is important ever gets done because the President and Congress, in effect, do little other than block each other’s proposals.

Could this be prevented?

I think it could, but only if the United States is prepared to tear up its Constitution and start again!

One fundamental question is – do you want your Head of State to also be the most powerful person in the country? It is difficult to see how this can happen unless you have a dictatorship, but neither is it is desirable for your figurehead leader to be seen as weak and held in low regard in his own country. France has this problem (something of an exception among European countries in this aspect of its constitution) and so does the United States.

The answer is to split the role between two people. This does not mean that you have to have a monarch at the top of the tree, because you can make this an elected office albeit not fought along political lines. This person would represent the country internationally and officiate on formal occasions but have no political power. He or she would be available for consultation by the political leaders, but no more than that. It is something that has worked very well in the Irish Republic, for example.

In the British system, the government is led by the leader of the political party that commands majority support in the House of Commons. If the party has a large majority, they will be able to get virtually all their proposed laws through the system, but if the parties are more evenly matched they may have to amend their proposals so that a majority can be found to get them through.

There is no chance of the Prime Minister becoming a dictator, because there are still limits on what he or she can do. A particularly strong limitation is the attitude of members of his/her own party, who can, should they so wish, elect a new party leader or bring the government down by supporting the Opposition in a “no confidence” vote.

I am not suggesting that the United States should adopt the British system as it stands, but there are elements of it that merit closer attention.

So would America still have a President?

Yes and No. Under a system that combined the British and Irish approaches, you could still have Presidential elections but you would not be electing into office somebody who made lots of promises but would then potentially be stymied whenever they tried to put them into effect.

The elections to Congress would take over as being more important, because the leader of the winning party would then be the person who led the government and could make the decisions that mattered. The Presidential veto would go, because this is a fundamentally anti-democratic institution, to be replaced by a signature that would only be withheld on very rare occasions (the equivalent of the British Royal Assent).

Thought needs to be given to the “checks and balances” question. If they have the effect of making government impossible, have they gone too far? It is probably the case that some checks are necessary, so these might need to be incorporated in a new Constitution, but they would not operate as they do at present.

So there you have it. Would the United States be better governed if it tore up its Constitution and wrote one that was more attuned to the 21^st century than the 18^th? Maybe!

© John Welford

A load of Bunkum

We all know the word "bunkum", which means "a load of rubbish" when spoken or written by someone else, but I don't suppose that many people know how the word came to mean what it does.

It all goes back to US Congressman Felix Walker, who was elected in 1816. Not only was he immensely proud of the people that he represented, but he thought that the rest of the House should know all about them as well.

He therefore spoke at length about his district whenever he got the opportunity, which meant every time he was called upon to speak, whether or not the matter at hand was even remotely relevant to his particular bit of North Carolina.

The name of his district was Buncombe County, and the name therefore became a byword for irrelevant rubbish.

© John Welford

The UK General Election of 2001

The UK General Election fought on 7^th June 2001 saw the second victory of “New Labour” led by Tony Blair, following their stunning landslide win in 1997 that brought to an end 18 years of Conservative rule.

As is typical of governments that are confident of their position, Tony Blair called the 2001 election after four years in office rather than five, and the result seemed to justify his confidence. The overall result was “steady as you go”, with only a handful of seats changing hands. Labour lost only six net seats, with the Conservatives making only one net gain (they won nine seats but lost eight). Of the mainstream parties, the Liberal Democrats had most to cheer on election night, with their parliamentary representation rising from 46 to 52.

The Conservatives fought the 2001 election under a new leader, William Hague, who had succeeded former Prime Minister John Major after the latter resigned following the 1997 defeat. However, as party leader he failed to galvanize the country, becoming something of a figure of fun after he was pictured riding a log flume at a theme park while wearing a baseball cap. He found it impossible to get the electorate to take him seriously as a potential Prime Minister and resigned as leader soon after the 2001 election.

The election campaign turned out to be low-key, with the opposition parties finding few issues on which they could attack the government, which had dealt competently enough with the issues that concerned the electorate during the four years since 1997. Polling on matters such as stewardship of the National Health Service and management of the economy showed that most people were satisfied with the way things were being handled and therefore saw no reason to change back to the Conservatives at this time.

This general air of satisfaction was reflected in the low turnout at the election, with only 59.4% of voters bothering to go the polling station, as against 71.4% in 1997.

In terms of proportion of votes cast per party, the Labour vote fell by 2.5% and that for the Conservatives rose by 1.0%, with the Liberal Democrats doing best with a 1.5% rise in vote share, although the low turnout mentioned above meant that the actual number of votes fell for all the main parties.

Of the relatively few seats that changed hands, a number could be accounted for by local circumstances. For example, in Taunton the sitting Liberal Democrat MP, Jackie Ballard, had been unwise enough to declare her opposition to fox-hunting in a very rural seat, and she paid the price accordingly. In Wyre Forest (Worcestershire) a local retired doctor, Richard Taylor, stood as an Independent and won with a majority of more than 17,500 (gaining 58.1% of the votes cast) on a ticket of defending the local hospital from closure.

One noticeable feature of the 1997 Conservative defeat had been their failure to win any seats in either Wales or Scotland, and they had high hopes of reversing this trend in 2001. In Wales they came closest in Monmouth, but fell short by just 384 votes. This failure in Wales was despite the relative unpopularity of Labour, whose share of the vote fell by 6%. However, given that most Labour seats in Wales were held with huge majorities, this percentage fall could easily be withstood.

In Scotland the Conservatives did manage to win their first seat since 1992, this being the border seat of Galloway and Upper Nithsdale which they took from the Scottish Nationalists with a majority of just 74 votes. Overall, the Nationalists (SNP) had a frustrating night, making no gains but suffering no other losses, thus ending up with five seats.

In Northern Ireland, where politics are fought on a completely different basis to that on the mainland, seven of the 18 seats changed hands, representing moves towards the extremes in both the republican and loyalist communities. Sinn Fein, who do not take up their seats in Parliament, doubled their number of MPs from  two to four, and the Democratic Unionists (led by Rev Ian Paisley) had a net gain of two seats over their more moderate rivals the Ulster Unionists.

Of the 659 MPs who took their seats after the 2001 election, 99 were new to the House of Commons, these comprising 38 Labour, 33 Conservatives, 14 Liberal Democrats and 14 others. This proportion of newbies, at 15%, was much lower than the 40% in 1997. The composition of the new House was overwhelming male, white and middle-class, with these trends being much greater among Conservative than Labour MPs. Only 188 MPs after the election were women, being three fewer than beforehand. Labour was the only party to have MPs who were from non-white ethnic minorities, the number of such being 12.

The 2001 General Election therefore resulted in a House of Commons that was not very different from what had gone before. However, Tony Blair’s Commons majority of 165 was to take something of a battering the next time round, being reduced to 60 in 2005.

© John Welford