Would America be better served by the westminster system of govt?

[Yorick]

What do you think?

[Timber Loftis]

What changes would you make to do that?

[Luvian]

What's Westminster?

[Yorick]

President becomes a figurehead.

Leader of the parliamentary majority is the President's Prime Minister. He/she can lose his/her job at any time if the party vote him/her out, so performance is constantly being assessed. However, there is no limit to his/her term, so they could be P.M. for 30 years if the public and party allowed it.

Ministers/Secretaries are only selected from elected representatives available.

Laws are introduced by the lower house and senate, but signed by the president who has no veto.

Lower house is the house representing the people, while the Senate represents the states (as they would all have equal representation)

The president becomes a figurehead with no real political power, except some emergency reserve powers.

I'm basing it on the idea that one man cannot represent so large and diverse a nation as the USA, and that a westminster system would more accurately enshrine the job delegating that already occurs in say Presidential cabinet appointments etc.

It's just that we the people would vote on which people could possibly serve as defense secretary for example, while the PM would appoint the position out of the pool of people elected.

It means people are in effect voting for a party, not an individual (even though individuals are representing them).
It means individuals representing them can be better known by their constituency, removing the necessity of spending billions of dollars making a single individual known to everyone.

I dunno.

The American system has it's admirers.... what do you think?

[Luvian]

Sounds like it has it's advantages.

[Sir Krustin]

The american system is useful in that it's possible to have a commons majority that opposes the president (This just occurred with the american midterms)

Anyone who's familiar with Canadian politics knows how bad it is to give any one party majority rule.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Sir Krustin: The american system is useful in that it's possible to have a commons majority that opposes the president (This just occurred with the american midterms) Anyone who's familiar with Canadian politics knows how bad it is to give any one party majority rule.

Westminster has it's checks and balances. Australia only recently handed the same party control of both senate and lower house. And then you have America, which just came off a one-party rule.

Then there's the other extreme where Europe with it's proportional representation system often has difficulty having one party with a clear majority at all making governing somewhat difficult.

I don't think any situation is perfect, I'm just wondering if westminster might be more appropriate given America's huge population.

I'll be watching what happens in the USA with interest to see how effective a party can be in having a majority in just one house. (Unless the Dems get the senate too of course).

To me it seems that if a party in the US system get's control of the house it's not as big a deal as in Westminster systems.

[JrKASperov]

[quote]Originally posted by Yorick:

Originally posted by Sir Krustin: [qb] Then there's the other extreme where Europe with it's proportional representation system often has difficulty having one party with a clear majority at all making governing somewhat difficult.

There's nothing difficult about that system at all. If you look what happened in holland the last couple of years, it's hard to say there can't be done a lot of stuff in this system. Also I think the multi-party system prevents any party from getting so much power they would implement crazy laws. Like president Bush did with his 'we can torture people if we want to' law.

[Harkoliar]

I prefer paliamentary system, gives more control to the Govt in making better decisions electing the leader rather than the public voting the leader simply because of them easily in being swayed who to vote for.

[Griefmaker]

Originally posted by Harkoliar: I prefer paliamentary system, gives more control to the Govt in making better decisions electing the leader rather than the public voting the leader simply because of them easily in being swayed who to vote for.

Actually, the American public does not have any real power to vote a person in as president, even though we vote every 4 years for one. We have an electoral college who is "supposed" to follow the will of the general public's vote when voting for a president, but it is they who choose the president, not the general public.