OMG!!!!!! The Messiah is coming!

You may or may not have heard, but President Messiah is in town, and tomorrow, he's speaking at Dobson High School in beautiful Mesa. In fact, it's about half a mile from my house. Squeeeee!!!!!! It was a spur-of-the-moment thing for Our Beloved Leader, so he only decided to speak there on Friday, but it wasn't in the paper until yesterday. Tickets were free, but people had already starting lining up for them when they were given away yesterday, so I had no chance to get them. Oh well. Apparently they're going to continue classes while he's speaking (at 10.30 in the morning), which is odd. Wouldn't they let the kids in for free?

I may have to watch local news for the coverage. I never watch local news! But that's what I will do for coverage of the Messiah!

Why is there no love for the American system of government?

As Barack Obama gets inaugurated and conservatives stew (I heard a complaint of a conservative this morning that it was the "tackiest" Inauguration ever because everyone was selling so much Obama crap - which I agree with, but I think it just shows how desperate people are to believe that their president isn't a scumbag), I wonder why our system of government isn't emulated more often around the world. A while back, I read in the book about Napoleon that the French, with "vivid memories of political pretensions by the old regime's high courts of parlements ruled out the American solution of vesting such authority in the Supreme Court." (page 28) This was part of a longer discussion of how the French were setting up their government, and although it's from 200 years ago, it still seems that countries setting up their democracies model them after the British form rather than the American. I'm not sure why that is.

The British have a parliamentary system of government, and many ex-British colonies follow this lead, but it seems like Iraq has set one up as well. I understand Canada, India, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries following the British model, but it seems weird that no other country follows the American model (at least none that I know of). In the British system, the prime minister is selected after the elections, when it's determined which party has the most members. The leader of that party becomes the prime minister. That's all well and good, but what's strange about the parliamentary system is that elections are held at any time. In Britain, they have to occur at least every five years, but there's no specific time for one. There's also no reason for a prime minister to ever give up his or her job. As long as his or her party wins the majority in the election, the prime minister could, conceivably, continue forever. I know this never happens, but there's no reason it couldn't. I wonder if this is a reason it's popular with nascent democracies - the prime minister can feel just like a dictator, and it's easier to shift from "prime minister for a long time" to "prime minister for life!"

I know there's a lot more to the British parliamentary system, but it seems a bit more unstable than ours. Not in Britain, of course, but they've been tinkering with it for 800 years. If the government can "fail" at any time and new elections be called, what's to stop despots from taking advantage of that? I know, a despot can take advantage of any system, but whenever you read about democracies falling apart, it starts with a prime minister getting a "no confidence" vote and the government needing a re-org. In the chaos, someone moves in and takes over. Yet countries keep trying it. I wonder why they don't look to the American model.

I admit that the American model isn't perfect. There's probably not enough direct democracy, although given the opinions of some people, that might be a good thing. But we always know when we have elections, and we usually know when there will be a new head of state. To all those people who bitched and moaned about what a wannabe dictator George Bush was, I would point out that we knew, with absolute certainty, that on 20 January 2009, we'd have a new president. It wasn't up for debate. Now, you can argue that the policies he put in place will be hard to undo (whether they should or not is something others can argue about), but the fact is, in 2006 or 2003 or whenever you started hating Bush, you knew that, at the latest, his last day in office would be 20 January 2009. There's no vote of no confidence in our system that destroys a government just because the opposition party is pissy about something. That may suck (I'm sure several Democrats would have liked to bring down the Bush government and install one of their own), but in the long run, it's fine. What did the Democrats do instead? They campaigned for Congress in 2006, when the elections were scheduled, won back the majority, and then got back the presidency in 2008, when elections were scheduled. And now, just like every four or eight years, we have a peaceful transfer of power. No fuss, no muss. If the Republicans don't like it, they have the 2010 and 2012 elections to gear up for. In the meantime, they can try to sway voters and even other members of Congress with more moderate policies. Or they can wait for Obama and the Democrats to screw up. It's not perfect.

It just seems to me that the American system is more stable than the British system. I get that the United States often doesn't have a stellar reputation overseas, but neither does Great Britain, so why is their system so much more attractive than ours? The United States, after all, has been the most stable government in the world for 226 years, and that's saying something. I'm not saying that countries shouldn't adopt the parliamentary system, because the Brits have made it work, but I often wonder why our republican system isn't more portable. Any ideas?

Post-Election Day thoughts

I don't know if Barack Obama will be a good president. Those who rail about his lack of experience ignore that this job is unique, and some people rise to the occasion and others don't. Theodore Roosevelt didn't have a lot of experience. Abraham Lincoln didn't have a lot of experience. Woodrow Wilson didn't have a lot of experience. Barack Obama might just have what is necessary to be a great president. Or he might not. We don't really know based on his previous political experience. I hope he'll be a great president, but pundits have no idea what kind of leader he'll be.

I mentioned this in the comments of a previous post, but I was disappointed by FOX News. They were deflated and a bit saddened by the results, but nobody went nuclear (or nucular, as our outgoing president might say) and ranted about how the country wouldn't exist in a year or two because of the president. Charles Krauthammer, whose columns are well written but often reflect the grumpiness of an old man, made a key point. Obama has a wide base of support, from moderately conservative independents to even hard core Republicans who are sickened by what Bush has done to their party. Because he has such a wide base, he can't implement a crazy left-wing agenda that (presumably) Congress will try to push now that they've gained seats. If he falls in line with Congress, he'll lose the support of a lot of people who want him to be something different than a traditional Democrat. I would love that, because I don't want government to be easy. I want it to be a struggle to get things passed, because that means they really have to think about it and make the legislation better. That's why I wouldn't really have minded if McCain won, even though I think McCain of 2008 is far less interesting as a candidate than McCain of 2000. McCain might have stopped the Democrats in Congress and forced them to write better bills. But maybe Obama will understand that he can't go completely ultra-liberal because he won't get re-elected. We'll see.

Here in Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio got re-elected because all Arizonans care about is punishing people who cross the border illegally to work. Arizonans don't care about Arpaio raiding businesses and holding legal residents against their will without charging them with anything (which he's done more than once) on the off chance there might be illegal immigrants working there. Arizonans don't care about punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, even though we passed a law against it two years ago. Andrew Thomas, the county attorney (who works closely with Arpaio and also won re-election), has prosecuted either no employers or one (I haven't checked, but Mia's PT thinks it's one, while I read last week that it was none). Arpaio doesn't seem concerned about shutting down these businesses when he actually does catch an illegal immigrant, even though they're breaking the law. Arizonans love Arpaio because he talks tough. Illegal immigration is a very tough thing to deal with, but most people want it to be simple. Arpaio doesn't do anything to solve it, but he makes it look simple. So he won. Again.

Arizona also passed Proposition 102, the amendment to the constitution that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This depresses me, but doesn't surprise me. Mia's PT and I argued about this on Tuesday, because he's a conservative guy and voted for the proposition. He doesn't have anything against gay people forming domestic partnerships, but doesn't like applying the term "marriage" to it. This gets back to what a "marriage" is. To him, it's a traditional definition, and that tradition should be honored. I didn't get into the idea of marriage as a union between a man and a woman who love each other is a very modern phenomenon, but that's a point. He said that if you ask elementary students what a family is, they'll say a man, a woman, and children. I pointed out that in today's society, half of them will say mommy and a boyfriend or mommy for four days a week and daddy for three, but his point was that they'll say a man and a woman. But that's biology. The idea of "traditional families" is meaningless, because for centuries, illegitimate children were common among the upper class, as marriages were not love matches and the man went off and got a mistress. The wife was, if not happy with this arrangement, resigned to it. I honestly don't get the objections to two men or two women wanting the same recognition as partners that married people get. If you want to start talking about saving the children, that's a different thing. If you want to stop gay people from adopting, that's a whole different argument. It's still stupid, but it's a different argument.

The only thing it comes down to is that people, mostly men, think gay men having sex is disgusting and they don't want to think about it. That's a poor reason to enact laws. But that's what we do in America!

I am curious to live in the Obama United States. I don't think Obama will bring about a huge revolution, because I think he's a fairly typical Democrat. However, the fact that he's neither black nor white will help us get beyond those labels, including calling him "black." If he were light-skinned, would we call him "white" even though his father is black? I love how if you have a drop of "black" blood, you're black, no matter what your skin color looks like. How silly. But I think he will be more successful dealing with the problems the country faces, mostly because he seems, if not smarter than Bush (I think Bush is an idiot, but he could be empirically intelligent), than at least more thoughtful. In this world, you can't go into situations using your "gut." That's the biggest problem I have with Bush. Common sense tells us the sun rotates around the Earth. Your "gut" often gets you in a lot of trouble. Maybe Obama will be a failure. It won't be because he didn't think about things, though.

Is it Inauguration Day yet?