Parliamentary vs Presidential

[Mike Ossipoff]

I just want to remind Donald I didn't advocate Parliamentary govt
in that message that he quoted. All of the messages recently posted
on that subject, including mine, agree about not trying to get
Parliamentary govt.

But Parliamentary or no Parliamentary, the chief executive
should be immediately removable by public vote at any time,
and, even if he isn't removed, it should still be easy for
the voters to over-ride his decisions. But that starts becoming
direct democracy, and I already made my case for that in my
previous posting about this. 

We often hear the objection that the public are impulsive, and
would do all sorts of draconian &/or irrational things. But
don't they now? The difference would be that they could immediately
un-do them, instead of being stuck with them for the next 4 years.

And, when people could no longer put the blame on politician
scapegoats, then they couldn't fail to gain some responsibility
in their decisionmaking.

Besides, I don't know about you, but I agree with some of the
ways the public has disagreed with their representatives. The
public opposed the Nicaragua Contra campaign. The American
public has consistently favored single-payer free healthcare.
Maybe some disagree with me about the rightness of the public
sentiment on those 2 issues, but the public, in those instances,
was taking the humanitarian position, not the kind of impulsive
"kick-their-ass" position that anti-direct-democracy people
fear. Until troops were sent to Saudi-Arabia, leading up to
Desert-Storm, the public also opposed that war.

Someone can always argue that a position is bad, and that
the public could make a bad one. Sure, and so can
elected representatives, who have the added problem of
conflicts of interest due to who gives them the most money.

It's been said by people who are knowledgable about that, that
the public is, overall, consistently more progressive than
their representatives. Could that be why the Democrats always
seem so much more progressive in their election campaigns than
they are after being elected. I heard about a House candidate
who emphatically opposed NAFTA, who wore an anti-NAFTA T-shirt
to a rallly, but who, when he got elected & went to Washington,
voted "yes" on NAFTA when it was up for House vote. Is this
an unfamiliar story? :-)

My point is that a lot of things might be better if the voters
could do what _the voters_ want to, instead of just hoping
that the person they elect will do what he's promised.

I didn't mean to go on about direct democracy this much; I only
intended to reply to what Don said.


Mike
 






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