Without a doubt, the biggest story in the news for all of last week, has to do with the shutdown of the United States Congress and the ultimately the entire United States Government due to differences between the President and both houses of Congress over the budget for the upcoming fiscal year which normally begins on the first of October. Since that time there have many theories as to who is to blame for this whole fiasco as this as the first such incident in seventeen years, some persons blame the president, others blame the Democrats and still others blame the Republicans and each have their own theories as to why, some say it’s the Republicans fault for being so stubborn, others say the President shouldn't be pushing his own agenda on to congress, I even heard one ridiculous theory that claims that it’s a personal attempt to sabotage Obama due to his race (a preposterous notion, how someone could even fathom that is beyond me).
The truth of the matter is that all of these are side arguments, any blame for the shutdown should be placed squarely at the feet of the Constitution of the United States, a document written over two hundred years ago by rebel colonist who led a revolution to overthrow their rightful monarch and set up a republican form of government. It is said that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it as truth, that is exactly what has happened here, the lie that has been spun over and over again that says that the US constitution is the best model in the world, that falsehood continues to permeate despite evidence to the contrary. The truth of the matter is that the political constitution of the United States is riddled with errors, in their effort to divide government function between three separate branches, while putting in measures to avoid any one branch from becoming too powerful, they have ultimately failed to putting in safeguards to deal with inefficiencies that may occur from a government shutdown of this nature, after all this is most certainly not the first time something like this has happened.
The first and biggest failure was of course the lack of a monarch, the United States Constitution clearly states that the Union shall guarantee to every state a republican form of government, thus clearly stating their rejection of monarchy once and for all, this was a most ill-advised and short sighted move on the part of the founding fathers. With a monarch at the helm of the nation this crisis would have been much easier to solve as he would have the authority to dissolve the legislature and call new elections, since unlike a President he would not be aligned to any political party and as such can be a totally neutral figure acting in the best interest of the nation on a whole rather than in a partisan manner the president who is himself a politician cannot do this as the constitution has placed limits on his domestic power in relations to his dealings with congress, a move originally meant to intend that the President can never exercise too much control over the legislature has turned into one where he is instead so hampered by it so much that he becomes politically impotent , the founders probably never thought about that when they wrote the constitution. Ironically enough, the American revolution was never meant to be a republican experiment from the outset, until the declaration of Independence the Colonial Army were fighting only to be free of control from the British Parliament and not from King George III, it was actually the declaration of Independence that later falsely and unjustly fingered the King as the main villain of the story. And even after they had won, many in the new country would have crowned George Washington as the new King had he wanted it, he refused and decided to run for president instead thus ending all hopes of a monarchy,A wiser man would have taken the Crown when it was offered to him but Washington did no such thing.
The second constitutional flaw that is ultimately responsible for this foul up, is this whole business of separation of powers where the executive and legislature are totally independent of each other , in a Parliamentary democracy, the Prime Minister cannot remain in office if he cannot command the support of the lower house, in the US the President can stay in office whether he has the support of congress or not leading to a great political deficit, if the chief executive cannot even get congress to support his proposals how can he get laws passed? Especially since he himself does not even have a seat in the house (which is of itself another shortsighted move). Clearly there must eventually be some political fallout from such a system. It grieves me every time I hear some idiotic Neo-Marxist claim that we in Jamaica should adopt a similar model by claiming that such a separation is more democratic as it allows for greater balance of power between both sides rather than Prime Ministerial dominance of parliament. Nothing however could be further from the truth, that kind of separation of executive and legislative only makes it easier for a dictatorship to come about, while it is true that the US itself has never become a dictatorship, many other countries that adopt the Presidential model cannot same the same. The simple fact is that the Westminster Model with its constitutional monarchy and its parliamentary structure has been proven as the most efficient of all forms of democracy that have been tried so far.
To illustrate take a look at the 1975 crisis in Australia where a similar situation was occurring, seeing that talks between the government and opposition was getting nowhere and that the Prime Minister was willing to use underhanded methods to get his way, the Governor-General dismissed the Prime Minister and appointed someone else in the interim until new elections were called soon after , while he eventually paid a high political price for his interference at least he had the good sense to know that the situation was untenable as is and was willing to use whatever means at his disposal the break the deadlock, unfortunately for the US no such thing can occur as they chose to play their game by a different set of rules altogether.
The deadlock is still on in earnest with no end in sight as yet , while it is expected that all parties involved will eventually come to a compromise that will end this crisis, that does not change that fact that someday in the future this might very well happen again unless they make some drastic changes to their constitution.
Bravo! Very well said.
ReplyDelete