Thursday, September 25, 2008

Why the American System Is Best

I took some heat (very little, really) for pointing out at Common Sense Political Thought that Europeans are hypocrites for their lecturing over American elections. Arguing that Americans must elect Barack Obama to escape our "racist past," the nannies of Europe have forgotten one thing: they have never elected a minority, nor have they directly elected a woman to a position of power.

It's one of the major differences between the American system and the parliamentary system of most of the world: We directly elect our officials while other countries elect parties. This difference has good points and bad: Americans are more invested in the individual assets of any particular candidate, whereas parliamentarians are more focused on party philosophies and promises.

This article lays out the differences quite well.

In theory, Europeans find American elections vulgar and plutocratic. In practice, they find them utterly gripping. This is partly because the US is wealthy and powerful, but mainly because American campaigns, being more participatory than European ones, are more interesting.

All organisations grow according to the DNA encoded at the time of their conception. The US was founded in a revolt against a distant and autocratic regime. In consequence, its polity developed according to what we might call Jeffersonian principles: the idea that power should be diffused and that government officials, wherever possible, should be elected.

Most European constitutions, by contrast, were drawn up after the second world war. Their authors believed that democracy had led to fascism, and that the ballot box needed to be tempered by a class of sober functionaries who were invulnerable to public opinion.

The difference between the American and European approaches can be inferred from their foundational charters. The US Constitution, including all 27 amendments, is 7,600 words long, and is mainly preoccupied with the rights of the individual. The Lisbon Treaty contains 76,000 words and is chiefly concerned with the powers of the state. The American Constitution begins, ‘We, the people...’; the Treaty of Rome begins, ‘His Majesty the King of the Belgians...’

America still is the Land of Kings and it's why our system works so well.