Proportional "Representation"

Although I've lived here in the Netherlands for 27 years, not having the right to vote, I've never been very interested in Dutch national politics, but I have seen and understood enough to appreciate that changing the British system of first past the post would be a criminal mistake.

I will grudgingly admit that PR does have some advantages. For one, that rarest of breeds - a competent politician - can actually stay in office beyond the life of a government (like Gerrit Zalm who was Minister of Finance for some 12 years, through several governments and despite changing his own political allegiances from PvDA (Dutch Labour Party) to VVD (Liberal). But, by the same token, it makes it almost impossible to get rid of anyone- however useless - like Balkenende, who had been Prime Minister for the last 8 years.

It's most damning feature is that the final government formation takes weeks to form and in no way mirrors the choices of the electorate. Take the 2006 elections. The CDA (Christian Democrat, centre right) won 26.5 percent of the votes, the PvDA (Labour) won 21.2. In third place, after a major turnaround, came the SP (socialists) with 16.6 percent. Who got to form the government? ... the CDA, PvDa and ... the ChristenUnie (conservative, Christian orthodox) who had won a royal 4.0 percent of the vote. 1.6 million SP votes ignored because the CDA felt that the SP could not be a "stable partner" in a government.

Back in June 2006 there was a dispute between Rita Verdonk (VVD Minister of Immigration Affairs and Integration) and her party colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the question of whether she was really entitled to Dutch nationality or not because she had lied about her surname and date of birth on her nationalisation application. The D66 party (minority coalition party) supported a vote of no confidence in Verdonk and the government fell.

In February of this year, after yet another Balkanende cabinet, the government fell again. In the midst of an economic crisis, in the midst of massive bank buyouts, the government fell. Why? Good question. It fell because the PvDA refused to agree with the CDA on the continuation of the Dutch Army police mission in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.

The current closed-door negotiations between Cameron, Clegg and Brown are not a preliminary, they are a foreboding of how things would be all the time under a proposed new PR system. With one fell swoop you would succeed in turning the British Government into something that would more closely resemble our real government in Brussels, where crucial matters are discussed and decided in secret, with no transparency, no reference to the electorate and, often, a result that is more aimed at keeping the current government in place than really serving the country's interests.

RESHUFFLE THREAD

Did you know ...

... that Barack Obama is not the first highly placed member of the American Executive to be of mixed racial ancestry? Well, no, we have not had any Presidents before but there was a Vice-President, Charles Curtis (1860 - 1936), whose maternal ancestry was almost entirely Native American. His mother, Ellen Pappan, was one-fourth Kaw, one-fourth Osage, one-fourth Pottawatomie and one-fourth French. (So Mr Curtis was one-eighth French. Hmmm, not sure about that.)

And whose Vice-President was he? Well, dear me, that of the much derided Republican Herbert Hoover. I do think this should be better known.

COMMENT THREAD

I have high hopes ...

... that President Obama will turn out to be as dishonest as he showed himself in his campaign and as unprincipled as his political background (hint: Chicago machine) would indicate. That would be much better than a Marxist ideologue, which is what some people were afraid of when they looked at his early friends and mentors. If Obama used the likes of Bill Ayers to rise in politics, my tears will remain unshed.

My high hopes are vindicated by the numerous references to "humility" made by the most arrogant, self-obsessed politician ever to be elected to the Presidency, in front of a crowd that, unnervingly, was chanting his name, instead of being awed by the office and the event. I think dishonesty covers that quite well.

Meanwhile, it looks like the actual inauguration ceremony was something of a mess. The booing of the outgoing President was disgraceful, whether you agree with the man or not. But, as I keep telling my American friends, it reminds me of 1997 here. These things do not last and the Obamabots will soon shrivel into discontent. Many conservatives are happier than they had expected to be. They obviously share my high hopes.

The inaugural poem seems to have been utterly terrible. Aretha Franklin, I am sure, was a joy to listen to. She always is.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery's Benediction degenerated into a racist rant, the exact opposite of what this election actually proved about America. Would Obama have really won if all white Americans were racists? Here is the video on Hot Air.

What of the birthday boy himself? The one I have such high hopes for? Well, he started by flubbing his oath, which is unfortunate in the circumstances. He then proceeded by making a completely uninteresting and cliche-ridden speech, seriously marred by gratuitous attacks on the outgoing Administration and suggestions that history and American leadership begins with him. The Anchoress has a good round-up. She is quite generous about the speech herself.

As a number of commentators have noted, Obama spoke as if he were still running a campaign and his supporters in the audience behaved like that, too. (Incidentally, the numbers were nearer to 1 million than the originally predicted 5 million.) I am not sure about the word "still". As I said before, he may well be planning on being inaugurated until the next presidential election. In fact, he may well have started the 2012 campaign in his inaugural speech. That would be a first in American history.

Back to real life, methinks. Michelle reminds us of what is being called the Generation Theft Act; more details here.

As for me, I shall go on having high hopes. I need to. If we are actually to believe Obama's various comments on foreign policy, the world is in dire trouble.

COMMENT THREAD

Will there be a break?

President-Elect Obama sees himself, we are told by the fawning media (as detailed by Sister Toldjah and Powerline), as the new Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, the Democrats being historically the party of slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation. Let us hope that does not mean that he intends to plunge the country into a vicious and debilitating civil war.

He also, clearly, sees himself as James Stewart in “Mr Smith goes to Washington”, the outsider who comes to DC to sort the mess out. How that squares with having been a US Senator for two years (at least nominally), an Illinois Senator for a term and a half and the product of the Chicago political machine is anybody’s guess.

There is nothing particularly odd about Obama coming to Washington on a train, though he actually had to leave the city in order to board it. Nor is there particularly strange about the festive atmosphere, though one does draw the line at the phrase “history in the making”. Every new President is “history in the making”. The question is what that history will be.

The inauguration of a new President is always exciting and I have watched several in the past on TV, urged by my father to look out for the man with the briefcase that supposedly contained the code that could unleash a nuclear war. As the incoming Commander-in-Chief was sworn in, he maintained, the man quietly detaches himself from the old one and positions himself behind the new one. I never managed to notice the crucial moment and have no idea whether the instructions were accurate.

So what do we have normally? The ceremony, which lasts about an hour and a half, the subsequent mingling with the waiting populace, though possibly there will be less of that this time as Obama is more heavily guarded than any other POTUS in history, and a ball in the evening.

Surely, the day after becomes a working day. This is the President of the most important country in the world we are talking about. Well, not this year. The inauguration period has been extended. Several days, possibly longer will be given to the celebrations, making this inauguration a little like the coronation of a monarch in that old Europe that so many Americans left behind.

At a time when people are steadily being laid off and the economic situation though still not quite as bad as it was in the thirties, is not particularly good and getting worse all the time, this sort of extravagance seems a little de trop. As Sister Toldjah says, even AP has noticed that there is something odd about this and about the Democrat insistence that all of this is justified.

As has become normal with the President-Elect, certain problems have arisen. There is, for instance, the prayer to be delivered during the National Prayer Service the day after the inauguration by the President Islamic Society of North America that has links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is a great deal of distasteful tat and schlock around as well as cries for all those who had not voted for Obama (something like 58 million) to support this wonderful new leader and to do so not just because he is the new President but because he is a very special new President. Let’s not forget the yucky new design of the American flag, known affectionately as Old Glory. Well, not for much longer. Glory to Obama, more like. More kitsch described on Pajamas Media. This is beginning to sound worse than royal weddings one has lived through.

And so it goes on and on. This does raise an interesting question. What we know of Barack Obama’s political career so far is that he gets elected sometimes using methods like leaking information about his opponents that had been sealed by the court, and immediately starts preparing for the next campaign, aiming onwards and upwards.

There is no onwards and upwards as of tomorrow afternoon. This is it. He will now be the President of the United States and the next election is not till 2012. Is he trying to extend the inauguration until it is time to start campaigning again? Or is there going to be a break between those events when he actually starts being President?

Some readers of this blog might think that it is not really our business. Well, I don’t know. What with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a certain situation in Gaza, Iran being difficult and Russia behaving insanely, not to mention the economic situation in the world, which is not helped by Congress spending like a drunken sailor, the issue is of some importance.

Who is going to clear up when the hangover sets in as it is bound to do?

COMMENT THREAD

Matters to do with the late unpleasantness in the former colonies

We interrupt our normal programmes to bring you some more news about the President-Elect of the former colonies, now unaccountably grown from 13 to 50 (not 57 but then Nancy Reagan did not conduct seances in the White House, either).

First, a very judicious account of what happened and what can possibly be expected by Mark Coalter on the Conservative History Journal blog.

Neo-neocon, one of my favourite bloggers, who intersperses excellent political analyses with postings about food and ballet, writes about a subject I mentioned as well, that is the curious attitude to political women in this election.

The Anchoress has a wonderful cartoon that speaks louder than words.

More worryingly, President-Elect Obama has not started off well on his foreign policy remit, as I write over on the BrugesGroupBlog. Will the Europeans like what they have got as the leader of their greatest ally? Hmmm.

Hillary for president?

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has formally announced her intention to run for US president in 2008.

"I'm in and I'm in to win," she says.

Wasn't one Clinton enough?

COMMENT THREAD

Gerald Ford - longest living American President

As my colleague abandons his Christmas cheer and wallows in toy stories – past and, above all, present – I shall turn attention very quickly to the man, whose death was announced yesterday, Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States.

Until now there were two things one always remembered about Ford; one is that he was the only President who had not been elected either to the presidency or the vice-presidency and the other is LBJ's comment about him. There are two versions of the latter, both indicating LBJ's low opinion of Ford's intelligence. Either he said that Ford was so dumb he could not walk and chew gum at the same time or, and this is much more likely, that he could not fart and chew gum at the same time.

Now we have a third piece of information: as of last month he was the longest living American President.

All of which is a little unfair on a decent, upright, reasonably able man who did the best he could in difficult circumstances. Becoming Vice-President after Spiro Agnew's resignation in October 1973, he took over as President when Nixon decided not to face probable impeachment and resigned in August 1974.

Taking over after Watergate, Ford did a creditable job of moving the country back more or less onto a steady course, though the hysteria generated by Nixon has survived and poisoned American politics to this day.

And that is about all one can say in Ford’s favour. While I can grasp that Gerald Ford is still remembered with a good deal of personal respect, I cannot understand the mawkishness of the blog entry on Hot Air and the comments on it. A good man does not a good president make.

His appointment of the ultra left Nelson Rockefeller as Vice-President was a disaster. The economy under him continued to lurch between inflation and recession with the government trying to counter the problems caused by OPEC-raised oil prices by ever more taxes and controls.

When it came to foreign policy, Ford was definitely of the "let us be nice to the Soviets and maybe they will be nice to us" persuasion (though one could never doubt his patriotism). Of course, neither the Soviets nor the Chinese had the slightest intention of tickling the West's tummy if it rolled over. A swift kick where it hurts most was the usual response.

SALT talks resulted in the Soviets constructing SS20s in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the Helsinki Accords, intended to be another surrender to the Communist world view, unexpectedly proved to be a useful weapon against oppression in that world and, consequently, aided its destabilization.

Helsinki Watch strengthened the dissident movement in the oppressed countries by making the plight of individuals who had courageously stood up for basic rights and liberties public in the West and giving politicians like Reagan and Thatcher weapons in their fight. Its successor, Human Rights Watch, is a considerably less useful organization.

Above all, however, Ford’s presidency is linked to the most appalling event in the West’s fight against Communism: the betrayal of South Vietnam and Cambodia. In 1974 the American troops began evacuating from South-East Asia. The Thieu regime was given strong promises of military aid if it continued the fight. The aid did not materialize.

North Vietnam, having effectively lost the war previously, now overran South Vietnam and at the end of April, 1975 Saigon fell. The "realists" and the media, which had induced the "Vietnam war" hysteria, had triumphed. Vietnam and Cambodia entered years of totalitarian oppression and genocide, while in the rest of the world the West and its ideas of freedom and democracy seemed in retreat.

To be fair to Ford, his narrow defeat by Jimmy Carter in 1976 turned out to be an even bigger disaster. Now there is a man about whom one might say many things but one will suffice: the worst and least successful president in the history of the United States.

Furthermore, unlike Carter, Ford retreated into private life and did not spend his time pretending to re-fight old battles, this time being victorious. In other words, he did not spend his time passing ignorant judgement about his successors' policies. Carter's obituaries are unlikely to be as respectful as Ford's.

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