Tired of Campaigns? Try Parliament

(Commentary) A new Rasmussen poll says 56 percent of likely voters believe that the debates and other activities so far in “Campaign 2007-2008″ have been “annoying and a waste of time.”  Odds are slim that many in that 56 percent have actually watched a debate, but we’ll let that slide for now.  More interesting: “72% of voters would favor a proposal to shorten the Presidential campaign season so that no one could begin campaigning more than a year before Election Day.”

The pesky little First Amendment might get in the way of that. But people who think the election season is too long could look to our parliamentary cousins across the sea. Parliamentary democracies are famous for fast general elections, which are called and held in a matter of weeks.

An apolitical independent’s dream?  Hardly.First, let’s look at what “called” means. The party in power can, to some extent, schedule the polling date to its own advantage. To pull off a snap general election, there needs to be a permanent, party-based political structure with candidates at the ready. No participatory primaries, just a party meeting with a list handed down from central headquarters.

There’s none of that all-American “I vote for the person — not the party” ticket-splitting stuff, which independents love, in the parliamentary system. To vote for Gordon Brown for prime minister, you have to vote for your local Labour candidate for MP, even if he’s a college professor with a beard and the local Tory MP is a nice soft-spoken fellow who looks good in a sweater.  And party discipline is much stronger within Parliament, with power more tightly concentrated in leadership.

But for the folks who are tired of politicking, here’s the worst part: A close result could mean an indecisive “hung Parliament” and another election, as the Brits suffered through in February and October 1974.  Would people who are “sick of all that campaigning” have enjoyed re-running Bush vs. Gore in, say, July 2001? OK, maybe in Palm Beach County.

Paper ballot advocates also might need to note that the hand-counted systems favored overseas work because there’s usually just one office on the ballot: Member of Parliament. Try hand-counting a two-sided Iowa general election ballot with all those soil and water commissioners and the yes or no lines on 10 judges sometime.

The most interesting difference to me, at this point in the cycle, is the timing of leadership selection.  We nominate candidates, then have a  general election.  But in a parliamentary system, the process is reversed.  The defeated party’s leader resigns the morning after the election (unless it was a close defeat like Labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1987 — and don’t say that name near a Joe Biden supporter). Then the process of choosing a new leader starts — just after the general election, not before the election.  In effect, parliamentary systems nominate their top of the ticket candidate four to five years before the election.  And the earlier our nomination process pushes back, the more closely we resemble that model.

Still, there’s some big advantages to parliamentary democracy. Do you really think George W. Bush could have handled that late night C-SPAN favourite, “Prime Minister’s Question Time?” Hear, hear!  And he would have lost a vote of confidence ages ago.