A Way Forward For America ...

January 21, 2021

What America needs most of all these days is a “Prime Minister” not a President, and newly-inaugurated Joe Biden has the skills to fit the bill.

Prime Ministers only keep their jobs if they can pass laws that benefit the public. They do this by winning a majority of seats in elections or, most often, by putting together coalitions. If unable to pass laws, they are turfed, sometimes with their party, which triggers an election. Elections are brief and taxpayer supported.

America’s system, by contrast, is designed to be adversarial with checks and balances that place the executive and two branches of Congress at odds with one another. This system relies on money and showboating which results in endless fundraising, gridlock, upmanship, and clashes. The American President is above this fray with a four-year gig and cannot be fired.

America may never have a parliamentary system, but needs one to cope with current political divisions, a raging pandemic, a tattered economy, seething extremists, a locked-down capitol, and a disillusioned electorate. Trust in political solutions has ebbed, making the country ungovernable in some ways. A coalition-maker is needed.

Ironically, America’s current conditions are ripe for change. The Republican Party is “unbundling” into factions. The Democratic Party is in power by razor-thin margins which will force its factions to modulate their policies to get laws passed. The United States has become a two-party system in name only, a target-rich environment for a consummate deal-maker without excessive ideological or narcissistic baggage. The right leader could cherry pick from members of both parties, on an issue by issue basis, and construct majorities to finally accomplish change for the public as a whole.

America’s two party system evolved because of the constant need for gobs of money to run increasingly lengthy and costly campaigns. Candidates must crawl into one of two big tents together even though they have competing agendas, regional interests, ideologies, and goals.

Other rich and stable democracies have overcome this impediment in large measure because money doesn’t dominate politics. They don’t have just two parties, but are divided into many smaller, but cohesive, entities. Why so many? Because their elections don’t cost the equivalent of Nigeria’s GDP, and because politicians are liberated from having to suck up to big donors. They get taxpayer assistance for bona fide party and electoral costs, and are forbidden from raising unlimited or secret cash from the big left, the big right, the big middle, or the big lunatics.

The result is a field so fragmented that politicians are forced to collaborate. This political culture has created laws that benefit the public, not donors, with the result that their middle classes are https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040615/what-country-has-richest-middle-class.asp richer, more educated, and healthier than America’s. Their wage gaps between rich and poor workers is dramatically less.

This system also allows members of the public to find or start a party that will be tailored to their needs. They are not forced to vote or join one of two amorphous political giants that are essentially moneymaking machines consumed with finding donors.

Three of the world’s well-managed nation-states have a slug of political parties. There’s Germany with 13 parties in its federal legislatures; the United Kingdom with 10 parties (including a Scottish separatist party), and Canada with five parties (including a Quebec separatist party). This is not unwieldy and works, but also serves as a shock absorber for voters who would otherwise be adrift politically or be forced to join off-line extremist organizations.

Here is Germany’s tangle of parties:

In a parliamentary sense, America’s Republican Party would be divided into: Mitt Romney moderates; Ron Paul libertarians; Mike Huckabee Christian Right; neo-conservatives; Steve Bannon paleo-conservatives; Ted Cruz Tea Party; and various looney white power and far-right outfits. America’s Democrats would be two entities: Biden centrists and Bernie Sanders’ Social Democrats.

With Biden at the helm, a new game to redraw the political map may be already afoot. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy put acrimony aside to attend mass with Biden before his Inauguration. McConnell voiced his disgust with Trumpism when he said “the mob was fed lies” by Trump that “provoked” the attack on the Capitol. And ten Republican House members voted with Democrats in favor of impeaching Trump last week.

Also unusual was the letter sent by 17 House Republican freshmen on the eve of the Inauguration congratulating Biden and offering their cooperation. "After two impeachments, lengthy inter-branch investigations, and most recently, the horrific attack on our nation's capital, it is clear that the partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans does not serve a single American," the letter stated.

Clearly conditions may allow Biden to form a series of coalitions to pass good-for-everyone, color-blind benefits such as generous stimulus payments, pork barrel infrastructure spending, higher minimum wages, and affordable healthcare.

Is this outright vote buying? You bet it is. But so were tax cuts. The difference is that social benefits go to everyone in Red or Blue states, poor or well-off, and repair communities and public spirit. Tax cuts only flow to Americans in gated communities.

If Biden pounces, and gets it right, he can shift America slightly to the left by making government work for people, not just billionaires and corporations. A Biden presidency may eventually muster the votes needed to undertake campaign finance reform in order to finally unbundle money from power in America.

Biden has the charm, and trade-offs and wheeling-and-dealing, are his stock in trade. If successful, rewards would be immediate and restore trust in the promise of politics. Creating a decent social safety net, as Germany and the others illustrate, is an important key to a strong and growing middle class, happier people, and national stability.

Hopefully, this new President won’t miss an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis. All that’s needed is a leader who places people first and who has the moxie and moves of a successful Prime Minister in a field of competing factions and parties. That’s when magic will happen finally for our bruised and beloved America.

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