Welcome to a parliamentary system

[rhu]

For years, I've looked at the way the fringe parties in Israel force the near-but-not-quite-majority parties to do their bidding by demanding various things (cabinet portfolios, money for their pet programs, certain government policies) as the price of joining or staying in the governing coalition. And our two-party system has looked pretty good by comparison.

I just realized that the Tea Party is to the Republicans as Shas (I wanted to say UTJ, but they joined after the coalition was over 61 seats) is to Likud. Except that they are coming in by being elected as Republicans.

Nonetheless, I think that the US now has the governmental paralysis typical of the Knesset, and from the same root cause.

Comments

[sethg]

A real (Westminister-style) parliamentary system would have two advantages over the morass we have now:

(1) The party, or party coalition, that achieved a majority in the lower house would own the government and, therefore, would own the consequences of enacting its agenda. If the Democrats had taken power in 2008 in a parliamentary system, they could have gotten health-care reform through a year earlier than it actually did, and it would probably have included a public option. Republicans who thought it was a bad idea would have had to run against it in the next election, rather than trying to water it down and kill it through parliamentary maneuvers in the Senate.

(2) If the lower house voted down a budget proposed by the government, it would have the same effect as a motion of no confidence: if a new executive could not win the confidence of the legislature, then new elections would have to be called.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

No disagreement here. My point was merely that our two-party system, with a fixed election cycle and separately-elected executive, used to shield us from the outsized influence of the fringe. Now we have the worst of both worlds.

[jadelennox]

goodness, that's a depressing way of looking at it. Probably accurate, too.