Stardate 20020808.1546

(Captain's log): Andrew writes to me from Germany, in response to a comment I made in my last post, as follows:

In many of those nations elections do get held, but always with trepidation, and to the extent possible with the choices being presented to those naive voters being carefully arranged ahead of time by the elite to make sure no dangerous alternative can be selected by the plebes in their foolishness.

Andrew took exception to this:

This is a bit much coming from a man who constantly defends the American two-party system.

You might also want to consider that you are always the first to criticize the politics of those that are elected by European voters. The German green party was such a group that was considered a "dangerous alternative" for years. But they made it (thanks to the European systems allowing dangerous alternatives where the US doesn't).

What I defend about the American system is "winner take all". Our system doesn't lend itself to coalition governments, where multiple parties with multiple agendas share power. It's true that the majority of the time one party will control at least one house of Congress while the other controls the Presidency, but that doesn't lead to the same political effects as a coalition government. The government can't fall because the Senate (currently controlled by the Democrats by a razor thin margin) disagrees with the House and President (which are currently Republican).

The flaw of that system is that instead of the flaws associated with a coalition government, we risk deadlock and paralysis instead. Every system has problems, but I find myself preferring ours. If the paralysis is caused by deadlock about a sufficiently important issue, it will get settled one way or another at the next election.

As to the "two party system", it isn't the particular two parties we have that I support, but that the number is two, because if there were more then we might have to start using coalitions. On the other hand, the policies of the parties we have tend to evolve quite a lot with time; their policies now bear little resemblance to what they were when I was in high school.

As it happens, over the course of the last fifty years the true power and influence of both parties have declined substantially, even more in the realm of local and state politics than at the national level, and I think this is a good thing. What you now have is two minority parties and a large group of uncommitted voters in the center who feel no affiliation to either, which the parties must woo. That serves to moderate them, which is also good.

With respect to the Greens, I don't think I've ever thought of them as "dangerous". I think of them as foolish and overly-idealistic, but that's not the same. In any case, I gather that their policies have evolved over time and it's not at all clear to me anymore just what their policies actually are, except that they have the same policy as any other party: to retain temporal power.

I don't think there is anything the Europeans can do to make it "right" for you.

You criticize the French president (a conservative) but hail the British prime minister (a socialist), yet you claim that it is European socialists who are that elite that does all the wrong things.

As to what the Europeans can do right, there's something that is really quite simple, but I'll talk about it below.

The terms "conservative" and "socialist" seem to be relative. By the standards of the US, there are no credible politicians in France who would be considered "conservative". They're all socialists (irrespective of whether they're formally labeled "Socialist"). It's just a matter of degree. And by the standards of Europe, the American Democratic Party (generally considered more "liberal" by us) would be extremely conservative. It's just that the Republicans are even more conservative.

Our political center is very far away from yours. Everyone judges terms like "liberal" and "conservative" in terms of deviation from their own political center, not on the basis of any kind of absolute scale. I don't doubt that to the French, Chirac is considered "conservative", but I don't think of him that way.

I think of the French presidential election as a choice between an extreme socialist (Jospin) and a less extreme one (Chirac), and the point was that the elite wanted to make sure that the voters only got to credibly choose between one flavor of socialism and another.

I'll believe that a French "conservative" has appeared with a major candidate recommends substantial cuts in the welfare state and drastic reductions in the number of government employees as part of his campaign for high public office. That would be "conservative" by my standards. Of course, such a candidate wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of election in France, so I don't expect to see such a thing any time soon.

But when I make comments about those kinds of political issues, it's mostly offhanded, and it isn't very important to me. The question of whether socialism is strangling France economically is ultimately a French problem, and one where the citizens of France have to make the decision and abide by the consequences. If they choose to abandon socialism, partially or fully, I'll cheer. But it's their decision to make. My antipathy to Chirac has little to do with that.