My son reminded me the other day that his Canadian relatives used to joke (even if not quite correctly) that Canada could have had English law, American know-how, and French culture, but instead, it got French law, English know-how, and American culture. And now it looks like it gets Italian politics, what with its too-many political parties. Although there was a federal Canadian election only six weeks ago (one in which the Conservatives won slightly less than half the seats in Parliament), that ‘minority government’ is on the verge of losing a ‘vote of confidence’ and if it does, then there could be another federal election in only a few more weeks. Or, the other parties in the Parliament could try to create a coalition to run the government.
Four things there worth explaining to the Americans:
1. No party won a majority of seats in the October election. There are five parties. They are/are called (neo?)conservatives/Conservatives; centrists/Liberals; separationists/P.Q.; environmentalists/Green; and progressives/NDP. The conservatives almost got a majority, but the other four parties, all of which are more center-ish, together have an actual majority of the votes/seats. To get to that majority, however, the Liberals, NDP, and PQ would all have to join forces. No other combination works.
2. The party who gets the most seats in an election is asked by the Governor General (whose office is largely ceremonial) to form a government. If that party (currently the conservatives) can get its bills passed, it holds the government and its leader is the Prime Minister. If it can’t, then the government falls.
3. When the government falls, the Governor General is informed and she can either call for another election (a ‘snap election’) or can invite the other minority parties to form a coalition government; a non-ceremonial function.
4. The four parties not currently in the government are to the left of the conservatives so there is potential for a coalition grouping, but the PQ’s raison d’etre is to have Quebec separate from Canada, which may make them an awkward partner in a national coalition government, but they could 'support' it without being an actual member of the coalition.
The conservative government bill that produced all this was, of course, the legislation that addressed the global financial collapse, which is clearly affecting Canada despite the contrary claims of Sunny Steve Harper. The problem with the bill, from the perspective of the other parties, is that it didn’t deal with the collapse. All it did was eliminate any financial subsidies for the political parties (a relative small dollar amount). The conservative response was to advise the opposition not to worry their pretty little heads about economic collapse because they’d get a real bill out to address the financial thing in the spring.
So, now Canadians await the next shoe fall. Harper has already withdrawn the subsidy-elimination legislation and has insisted that a comprehensive financial bill will be produced very shortly. It is always difficult to remember that Harper is, in fact, an economist, since he doesn’t talk as if he has any expertise in the area. It could be a few days, it could be a week, but some kind of do-over looks to be in the works.
Wouldn’t the GOP die to have that kind of opportunity, only six weeks after an election that they didn’t win by enough or at all?
Note: this post has been corrected from its original form in response to reader comments about several factual issues.
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Next Time
I awakened this morning to find that Barak Obama is still President-Elect. And now, we get to see whether he and his team can handle this Leviathan of which they’ve won ‘control.’ I have my doubts, but not because of any personal inadequacies he may have, which are doubtless as legion as everyone elses’. No, it’s more a belief in human inadequacies. The whale is just too big and too complex, so good enough would be my highest hopes. And we’ll see.
Nevertheless, when I was driving about in beautiful, downtown Point Roberts today, I was impressed to see that the International Market’s main sign, one of those changing digital signs, instead of saying, ‘Pork Chops, $3.89’ and then rolling to ‘’Apple Juice, 1 gal.,$2.99,’ this morning said, ‘YES, WE CAN’ before it went to the pork chops, and then returned to the ‘YES, WE CAN .’ I surely hope we can and if the groceries stores are going to do their part, maybe we actually can, although it still is not quite clear to me what it is that we are looking to do. A lot needs doing, certainly.
I was also reading in Harper’s this morning, by chance, about Ken Silverstein’s conversation with a North Carolina Democratic political operative, Gary Pearce. Silverstein asked him about how issues affect a campaign like the one we’ve just been through. “There ain’t no issues—that’s the great myth of politics. . . Basically it’s about who you trust. Where do you think the country is heading and how do you feel about these two guys.’”
That had a real ring of truth to it. So, here’s one of the things maybe we can do. We can knock off elections like the one we’ve just been through ($2 billion according to NPR’s business program), get rid of position papers (except for the policy wonks who like to read them) and TV ads, and tighten it up to a kind of serial, reality show (much more popular with Americans than politics, anyway) in which the candidates appear on TV over a short period of time in several discreet programs designed for us to figure out if we can trust them. ELECTION 2012: WHO DO YOU TRUST? Presumably, the audience already knows how it thinks the country is doing. On these shows, the candidates will talk to people and they’ll do things. We could vary the format from election to election, but here’s some possibilities:
1. A session in which each helps aMedicare recipient understand the bills that Medicare and secondary insurers have sent to them and explains what they should do next. Specific bills will be available for discussion.
2. A session in which they negotiate differences between two angry people.
3. A session in which each provides counselling to a family in foreclosure.
4. A session in which each discusses with someone like Joe the plumber whether he’s likely ever to become a successful entrepreneur; which is to say, what it would take as compared to where he is now.
5. A session in which they describe their funniest vacation, their best vacation, their worst vacation.
6. A session in which they help us to understand what a specific losing sports team should and could do to improve its hopes of a winning season; maybe the Cubs, since baseball is the American sport.
7. A session in which they explain their tax returns to us (their returns will be available for print-out via the net before the program so we can follow along with the discussion).
8. A session in which each tries to entertain, for fifteen minutes, a small child whom they did not previously know, and then engages in conversation with a (similarly unknown) first-time voter between the ages of 18 and 20 for the rest of the program’s time.
9. A session in which each spends fifteen minutes with Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, Jon Stewart, O’Reilly and O’Hannity, or someone of that sort with the ‘that sort’s’ job to be not to interview but to try to intimidate the candidate.
10. A session in which each describes how he and his wife and his children managed to pay their college tuition. This can be a very short session, of course, for some candidates.
Now, I’m sure there are other, better ideas for these sessions (although I do think ten is a nice number). The trouble with blogging is that you don’t get to sit and think about ideas for a week or two. But the concept is what I’m after here. No way this costs two billion. The TV time is free: the public owns the airwaves; the stations only lease them. Everybody is required to wear the same outfit each time so we can keep their identities straight, so no large clothing expenditures are required. Everyone will be required to get a $400 haircut, however. Even counting the haircut, the candidates can be expected to pay for this out of their pocket change, thus freeing the public of lobbyists. And since issues don’t matter, the public won’t have to be working to figure out things that they find difficult to keep track of. And, very best of all, it will eliminate all need for PUNDITS during the election season. They can go vacation in France and vote absentee, and the rest of us will be pundit-free for ten weeks. Excellent!
Ten weeks at the most the final campaign will take and we will have to hear from them only for ten programs, which would be ten hours at the most. And we would surely be better able to figure out whether we could trust them from this, as compared to what we have just gone through which has largely made me want to trust neither of them. We can be easier on ourselves AND on the candidates. Yes, We Can. And that is change you can believe in, my friends. Or something.
Nevertheless, when I was driving about in beautiful, downtown Point Roberts today, I was impressed to see that the International Market’s main sign, one of those changing digital signs, instead of saying, ‘Pork Chops, $3.89’ and then rolling to ‘’Apple Juice, 1 gal.,$2.99,’ this morning said, ‘YES, WE CAN’ before it went to the pork chops, and then returned to the ‘YES, WE CAN .’ I surely hope we can and if the groceries stores are going to do their part, maybe we actually can, although it still is not quite clear to me what it is that we are looking to do. A lot needs doing, certainly.
I was also reading in Harper’s this morning, by chance, about Ken Silverstein’s conversation with a North Carolina Democratic political operative, Gary Pearce. Silverstein asked him about how issues affect a campaign like the one we’ve just been through. “There ain’t no issues—that’s the great myth of politics. . . Basically it’s about who you trust. Where do you think the country is heading and how do you feel about these two guys.’”
That had a real ring of truth to it. So, here’s one of the things maybe we can do. We can knock off elections like the one we’ve just been through ($2 billion according to NPR’s business program), get rid of position papers (except for the policy wonks who like to read them) and TV ads, and tighten it up to a kind of serial, reality show (much more popular with Americans than politics, anyway) in which the candidates appear on TV over a short period of time in several discreet programs designed for us to figure out if we can trust them. ELECTION 2012: WHO DO YOU TRUST? Presumably, the audience already knows how it thinks the country is doing. On these shows, the candidates will talk to people and they’ll do things. We could vary the format from election to election, but here’s some possibilities:
1. A session in which each helps aMedicare recipient understand the bills that Medicare and secondary insurers have sent to them and explains what they should do next. Specific bills will be available for discussion.
2. A session in which they negotiate differences between two angry people.
3. A session in which each provides counselling to a family in foreclosure.
4. A session in which each discusses with someone like Joe the plumber whether he’s likely ever to become a successful entrepreneur; which is to say, what it would take as compared to where he is now.
5. A session in which they describe their funniest vacation, their best vacation, their worst vacation.
6. A session in which they help us to understand what a specific losing sports team should and could do to improve its hopes of a winning season; maybe the Cubs, since baseball is the American sport.
7. A session in which they explain their tax returns to us (their returns will be available for print-out via the net before the program so we can follow along with the discussion).
8. A session in which each tries to entertain, for fifteen minutes, a small child whom they did not previously know, and then engages in conversation with a (similarly unknown) first-time voter between the ages of 18 and 20 for the rest of the program’s time.
9. A session in which each spends fifteen minutes with Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, Jon Stewart, O’Reilly and O’Hannity, or someone of that sort with the ‘that sort’s’ job to be not to interview but to try to intimidate the candidate.
10. A session in which each describes how he and his wife and his children managed to pay their college tuition. This can be a very short session, of course, for some candidates.
Now, I’m sure there are other, better ideas for these sessions (although I do think ten is a nice number). The trouble with blogging is that you don’t get to sit and think about ideas for a week or two. But the concept is what I’m after here. No way this costs two billion. The TV time is free: the public owns the airwaves; the stations only lease them. Everybody is required to wear the same outfit each time so we can keep their identities straight, so no large clothing expenditures are required. Everyone will be required to get a $400 haircut, however. Even counting the haircut, the candidates can be expected to pay for this out of their pocket change, thus freeing the public of lobbyists. And since issues don’t matter, the public won’t have to be working to figure out things that they find difficult to keep track of. And, very best of all, it will eliminate all need for PUNDITS during the election season. They can go vacation in France and vote absentee, and the rest of us will be pundit-free for ten weeks. Excellent!
Ten weeks at the most the final campaign will take and we will have to hear from them only for ten programs, which would be ten hours at the most. And we would surely be better able to figure out whether we could trust them from this, as compared to what we have just gone through which has largely made me want to trust neither of them. We can be easier on ourselves AND on the candidates. Yes, We Can. And that is change you can believe in, my friends. Or something.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Canadian Minority
It’s been over a week since Canada’s largely disappointing election concluded. The Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called an election because, presumably, he thought he could win enough seats in Parliament to become a majority P.M. rather than a minority P.M. Alas, he now has the dubious distinction of being only the second minority P.M. to be elected twice. Didn’t like him that much two years ago, don’t like him much better now. Nevertheless, he is more or less on top of a pretty flat hill with about 40% of the vote and about 40% of the seats in Parliament. The voter turnout was low, around 60%.
The Liberals got about half as many seats as the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP, and the Greens have the rest. What it means is that the Conservatives don’t have enough support to do what they want (be more like George W. Bush, unfortunately: apparently Conservatives up here haven’t heard that the rest of the world has thoroughly disabused themselves of the notion that George W. Bush has any mojo). This moderate passion for the Conservatives is puzzling because 77% of Canadians have developed a negative view of the U.S. since Bush was elected. It’s hard for me to understand exactly how it is that they don’t see the Bush in Harper, but I guess they don’t.
So nothing much will happen in Canadian politics for a few more years until another election is called. The Liberal leader has promised to quit in May, so that party can spend the next half year fighting about who is to replace Dion. Small potatoes, I suspect.
It’s a little difficult to understand how Canadian politics works because the parties are not all that clearly delineated to me in terms of philosophy. While poking around on the net trying to find somebody who would explain this more fully, I came upon an excellent site, Political Compass, that not only showed me where Canadian parties are philosophically, but showed me where I am. And you can take a little test (about 50 questions) to find out where you are, too.
The test involves about 50 questions which are not entirely easy to answer because, sometimes, they pose either/or questions when you might be more likely to answer both/and. But on the whole, they are interesting questions because they push you to clarify your philosophical orientation in order to answer them. You answer them on a 4-point scale (strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree). The object is to clarify your position on two distinct scales, one economic, the other social. Authoritarian-Libertarian tracks the social dimension, while Left/Right (with communism at the extreme left and neo-liberalism/libertarianism on the extreme right) tracks the economic dimension. So your answers place you somewhere within four boxes described by those two axes. I ended up close to Ghandi, which is nice, although I have been much less effective in my political life than he was, but on the other hand I am currently much more alive.
In addition, the site shows how various countries’ political parties and election candidates rank on this scale. They do this by determining how the parties’ or the candidates’ statements suggest they would answer the questions. When I looked at the Canadian parties’ scale, I was surprised to see that mostly they are in the upper right box: Authoritarian/Right. By contrast, the U.S. election primary campaign candidates were even more all in the upper right hand box, suggesting not so much contrast as I would have thought Well, there Ghandi and I are down in the Left/Libertarian, lower left box, with Canada’s NDP and Bloc Quebecois as well as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich barely in there with us. No wonder I feel so isolated from the U.S. process so much of the time.
So, my advice is go to the site, take the test, look at your results and see whether you might feel more at home in New Zealand or the E.U. or are nicely in line with wherever you are.
The Liberals got about half as many seats as the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP, and the Greens have the rest. What it means is that the Conservatives don’t have enough support to do what they want (be more like George W. Bush, unfortunately: apparently Conservatives up here haven’t heard that the rest of the world has thoroughly disabused themselves of the notion that George W. Bush has any mojo). This moderate passion for the Conservatives is puzzling because 77% of Canadians have developed a negative view of the U.S. since Bush was elected. It’s hard for me to understand exactly how it is that they don’t see the Bush in Harper, but I guess they don’t.
So nothing much will happen in Canadian politics for a few more years until another election is called. The Liberal leader has promised to quit in May, so that party can spend the next half year fighting about who is to replace Dion. Small potatoes, I suspect.
It’s a little difficult to understand how Canadian politics works because the parties are not all that clearly delineated to me in terms of philosophy. While poking around on the net trying to find somebody who would explain this more fully, I came upon an excellent site, Political Compass, that not only showed me where Canadian parties are philosophically, but showed me where I am. And you can take a little test (about 50 questions) to find out where you are, too.
The test involves about 50 questions which are not entirely easy to answer because, sometimes, they pose either/or questions when you might be more likely to answer both/and. But on the whole, they are interesting questions because they push you to clarify your philosophical orientation in order to answer them. You answer them on a 4-point scale (strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree). The object is to clarify your position on two distinct scales, one economic, the other social. Authoritarian-Libertarian tracks the social dimension, while Left/Right (with communism at the extreme left and neo-liberalism/libertarianism on the extreme right) tracks the economic dimension. So your answers place you somewhere within four boxes described by those two axes. I ended up close to Ghandi, which is nice, although I have been much less effective in my political life than he was, but on the other hand I am currently much more alive.
In addition, the site shows how various countries’ political parties and election candidates rank on this scale. They do this by determining how the parties’ or the candidates’ statements suggest they would answer the questions. When I looked at the Canadian parties’ scale, I was surprised to see that mostly they are in the upper right box: Authoritarian/Right. By contrast, the U.S. election primary campaign candidates were even more all in the upper right hand box, suggesting not so much contrast as I would have thought Well, there Ghandi and I are down in the Left/Libertarian, lower left box, with Canada’s NDP and Bloc Quebecois as well as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich barely in there with us. No wonder I feel so isolated from the U.S. process so much of the time.
So, my advice is go to the site, take the test, look at your results and see whether you might feel more at home in New Zealand or the E.U. or are nicely in line with wherever you are.
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