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To an American it's always amusing when a European tells us our political system is unsatisfactory. Over and over and over again. Never gets old. No, really. Ke

by aaronem 11y ago

To an American it's always amusing when a European tells us our political system is unsatisfactory. Over and over and over again. Never gets old. No, really. Keep it up.

vacri 11y ago
You have a choice of only two parties to represent a population of 310M people of diverse backgrounds. How can that possibly be anything but unsatisfactory, regardless of your origin?
- Amezarak 11y ago
  > You have a choice of only two parties to represent a population of 310M people of diverse backgrounds. That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics. It is true that there are two mainstream America political parties. However, anyone is free to run as an Independent or under the banner of any other party they choose, whether that be the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. Here is an example ballot, showing that more than just Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were on the 2012 federal election ballot: http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sample%20Ballot%209%2012%202012.pdf http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sampl... As you can see, the Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Reform Party also appeared on the ballot. It is true that voters seldom vote for people outside the Republican or Democratic parties. (Two notable recent exceptions are Bernie Sanders, formerly Democratic Socialist who switched to Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, Independent) Why is this? Because for the most part, people are happiest with one of those two. How's that possible? Because there's an enormous amount of political range within a party. Basically anyone can up and announce that they're a Republican at any time, and that's that. Ron Paul and John Kasich can be in the same party and nobody blinks an eye. That's why you hear expressions like 'Tea Party Republicans' or 'Blue Dog Democrats' or 'Southern Democrats'. There's a lot more variety in the party than you see in European parties and party members are free to do basically whatever they want while in office. They don't have to vote in blocs. At the same time, Americans vote for damn near every position imaginable. Federal government is largely divorced from most people's everyday concerns; you get a vote for President/Vice-President, two Senators, and a Representative. The policies that affect the average American most are legislated and executed on a local and state level, not a federal level. States have enormous power in America politics. And take my state, for example: I get to vote for Governor, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner, State Senator, Insurance Commissioner, Public Service Commissioner, Transportation Commissioner, Supreme Court Justice, District Attorney, and House Representative. On the county level, which is also where an incredible amount of decisions are made, I elect a Supervisor, Constable, Sheriff, Justice Court Judge, Tax Collector, Tax Assessor, Chancery Clerk, Circuit Clerk, School Board Member, Superintendent of Education Coroner, and Prosecuting Attorney. And the more local you get, the less party matters at all. There isn't a democracy problem in America: most of the most important decisions - education funding, infrastructure development, criminal laws and prosecutions, law enforcement, taxation, utility management, etc - are made on a state level or a hyperlocal city or county level. The reality is that the federal government has comparatively little to do with most people's lives, beyond getting a federal income tax return, the military, Social Security, and Medicare. The problem is with the people.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics. It is in practice quite true even if it is not nominally true, and not only that it is true, but the connection between it and the particular kind of poorly-representative electoral system the US has been established by comparative study across democracies. > There isn't a democracy problem in America Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative.
    - Amezarak 11y ago
      >Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative. Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative? People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative. There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor. In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale. There's an unwarranted hyper-focus on federal government because it's the most visible and affects the most citizens, but for most people's day to day lives, it is the least important level of government. If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.
      - vacri 11y ago
        > Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative? While 'Winner Takes All' is one way to do representative voting and checking that item off the list, it's one of the worst ways to be representative. CGP Grey has a series of videos on different voting systems and their pros and cons on youtube - start with this one, which goes through the ways 'winner takes all' drives towards worse representation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo Another issue that Grey doesn't mention is that electioneering in the US is so constant and expensive, that politicians can rarely afford to speak in-depth to people without money to donate. It's a subtle effect and not really corruption, but a result of having to endlessly chase the dollars in order to electioneer. The US has a representative system, no-one's arguing against that. But is it satisfactory or unsatisfactory?
dragonwriter 11y ago
> To an American it's always amusing when a European tells us our political system is unsatisfactory. As an American, I find it amusing the same way I find it amusing when someone points out the sky is blue, or the Earth is round.
__44x0 11y ago
Didn't catch the Republican debate last night eh? Unsatisfactory does not begin to describe the situation with American politics.
MaysonL 11y ago
And the Europeans are always incredulous when they learn that the infant mortality rate in the U.S.A. is correlated with the zip code.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by aaronem 11y ago

To an American it's always amusing when a European tells us our political system is unsatisfactory. Over and over and over again. Never gets old. No, really. Keep it up.

vacri 11y ago

You have a choice of only two parties to represent a population of 310M people of diverse backgrounds. How can that possibly be anything but unsatisfactory, regardless of your origin?

Amezarak 11y ago
> You have a choice of only two parties to represent a population of 310M people of diverse backgrounds. That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics. It is true that there are two mainstream America political parties. However, anyone is free to run as an Independent or under the banner of any other party they choose, whether that be the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. Here is an example ballot, showing that more than just Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were on the 2012 federal election ballot: http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sample%20Ballot%209%2012%202012.pdf http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sampl... As you can see, the Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Reform Party also appeared on the ballot. It is true that voters seldom vote for people outside the Republican or Democratic parties. (Two notable recent exceptions are Bernie Sanders, formerly Democratic Socialist who switched to Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, Independent) Why is this? Because for the most part, people are happiest with one of those two. How's that possible? Because there's an enormous amount of political range within a party. Basically anyone can up and announce that they're a Republican at any time, and that's that. Ron Paul and John Kasich can be in the same party and nobody blinks an eye. That's why you hear expressions like 'Tea Party Republicans' or 'Blue Dog Democrats' or 'Southern Democrats'. There's a lot more variety in the party than you see in European parties and party members are free to do basically whatever they want while in office. They don't have to vote in blocs. At the same time, Americans vote for damn near every position imaginable. Federal government is largely divorced from most people's everyday concerns; you get a vote for President/Vice-President, two Senators, and a Representative. The policies that affect the average American most are legislated and executed on a local and state level, not a federal level. States have enormous power in America politics. And take my state, for example: I get to vote for Governor, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner, State Senator, Insurance Commissioner, Public Service Commissioner, Transportation Commissioner, Supreme Court Justice, District Attorney, and House Representative. On the county level, which is also where an incredible amount of decisions are made, I elect a Supervisor, Constable, Sheriff, Justice Court Judge, Tax Collector, Tax Assessor, Chancery Clerk, Circuit Clerk, School Board Member, Superintendent of Education Coroner, and Prosecuting Attorney. And the more local you get, the less party matters at all. There isn't a democracy problem in America: most of the most important decisions - education funding, infrastructure development, criminal laws and prosecutions, law enforcement, taxation, utility management, etc - are made on a state level or a hyperlocal city or county level. The reality is that the federal government has comparatively little to do with most people's lives, beyond getting a federal income tax return, the military, Social Security, and Medicare. The problem is with the people.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics. It is in practice quite true even if it is not nominally true, and not only that it is true, but the connection between it and the particular kind of poorly-representative electoral system the US has been established by comparative study across democracies. > There isn't a democracy problem in America Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative.
  - Amezarak 11y ago
    >Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative. Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative? People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative. There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor. In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale. There's an unwarranted hyper-focus on federal government because it's the most visible and affects the most citizens, but for most people's day to day lives, it is the least important level of government. If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.
    - vacri 11y ago
      > Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative? While 'Winner Takes All' is one way to do representative voting and checking that item off the list, it's one of the worst ways to be representative. CGP Grey has a series of videos on different voting systems and their pros and cons on youtube - start with this one, which goes through the ways 'winner takes all' drives towards worse representation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo Another issue that Grey doesn't mention is that electioneering in the US is so constant and expensive, that politicians can rarely afford to speak in-depth to people without money to donate. It's a subtle effect and not really corruption, but a result of having to endlessly chase the dollars in order to electioneer. The US has a representative system, no-one's arguing against that. But is it satisfactory or unsatisfactory?

dragonwriter 11y ago

> To an American it's always amusing when a European tells us our political system is unsatisfactory. As an American, I find it amusing the same way I find it amusing when someone points out the sky is blue, or the Earth is round.

__44x0 11y ago

Didn't catch the Republican debate last night eh? Unsatisfactory does not begin to describe the situation with American politics.

MaysonL 11y ago

And the Europeans are always incredulous when they learn that the infant mortality rate in the U.S.A. is correlated with the zip code.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]