Yes, more politics. But this is also about systems, and so I think it very relevant to this little corner of the intertubes.
The Times did one of their little swing voter panels the other day, and a lot of the people on that panel were being mocked. I am not a huge fan of that behavior, largely because I think people who follow politics forget how easy it is to not know things in our media environment. If you followed the mainstream press, you would think that project 2025 had been completed repudiated by the GOP when in fact it was clear to anyone who followed politics that was not the case. So going off on people who don’t have what is essentially the same hobby as you seems performative at worst, unhelpful at best. Because buried in these panels can be useful information.
A pause before people explode at the hobby comment. Following politics in this country is hard. We have mainstream media environment split between right wing propaganda networks, led by Fox, and middle of the road networks dedicated to a false sense of “both sides”, in part to keep from being savaged by the right-wing propaganda network. Finding real information takes time and effort. All of that is compounded by the complexity of our system — understanding who to blame for something can be tricky and counterintuitive. Which brings me back to the panel in question.
One of the respondents talked about how Biden failed on his promise to forgive and/or ameliorate student debt. That comment was lightly mocked online, since the real problem was the Supreme Court, Republican Senators, and a couple of Democratic Senators and representatives. First, it should be noted that the person in question knew that someone had blocked Biden — her beef was that they didn’t react well to the blocking. Now, the Biden Administration did have alternative plans, but many of them were blocked by virtue of not being in control of the legislature, not fully. And that gets to the heart of our problem — there are too many veto points in our system for most people to understand how to allocate blame and praise. The presidential system makes democracy in our modern media environment almost impossible to sustain.
Our system diffuses blame across too many actors, and so no one really knows who to blame. Combine that with the press that views every issue through the lens of presidential power, and we end up with a system that elects people to do things and then not only prevents them from doing those things but prevents most people from understanding who really prevented those things from being done absent an almost obsessive focus on political news. It is not unreasonable, in our media environment, for people who are not that obsessive to wonder why the President does not do what he or she promised to do.
I am convinced that one of the reasons Biden and Harris did so poorly was the ending of the COVID benefits. For a while, the US had something approaching a real social welfare system, and people appreciated it. Then it went away. People who follow politics understand that it went away because Manchin killed it. But normal people only see that Biden took away something that helped them. And if you told them, well, a senator killed it, they would quite reasonably ask why the Dems were not pushing democratic priorities. What’s the point of a party that does not support the party’s plans?
A parliamentary system avoids many of these problems. It focuses power and responsibility on the party that is actually in power, making it clear who is responsible for the good or bad things. It has the ability to trigger elections when politicians screw up too much, and it reinforces party discipline so that a party that is elected on X is reasonably expected to do X. Parliamentary system are no panacea, of course, but they are much more responsive to voters.
Now, I have no idea how we reasonably expect to get to a parliamentary system, and it is hardly the only reform we need (reducing the power of the Senate, expanding the size of the House, restraining the power of Courts to arbitrarily interfere with legislative and executive powers, etc.), but it is the reform without which we will continue to teeter on the edge of fascism every four years. I suppose you could argue that we need to get the press to do a better job, but that seems to me to be less likely that a change in the system. There are no incentives for the press to do a good job, and many for them to continue to do the terrible job they are doing today. While I think people need to continue to try, I suspect such a path is less likely than changing the government.
We suffer from a lack of understanding and accountability in our government. If we do not fix those issues, then climbing out of the current authoritarian hole is going to remain extremely difficult. Climbing the walls of that hole in this media environment is like climbing a sheet of ice. Doing so in our current governmental system is like pouring industrial strength lubricant on those walls at the same time. We must start taking seriously the reforms we need to safeguard the country.
No kings. No presidents. Long live the Prime Minister.
Want more oddities like this? You can subscribe to my free newsletter
