A MODEST PROPOSAL

The media has been full of articles about the difficulty the Obama administration has had filling jobs at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. The Treasury has been the object of greatest concern because it is obviously on the front line of the new administration's frantic effort to deal with the gathering deep recession.

This problem for incoming American administrations is not new. It usually takes more than a year to fill all of the political appointments in a new administration. We just don't usually notice or read many articles about the trouble filling jobs. This time the spotlight on this problem is so much greater.

Comparing the British system, as always, is interesting and in this case perhaps provides a good contrast which American political leaders might consider when taking up promised reforms over the next few years.

To start with, the British don't experience months of sometimes paralyzing "lame duck" government between the "long goodbye" of the outgoing administration and the arrival in office of the new. The new British Prime Ministers takes office within hours, yes hours, of his parties' victory in the election. Moving trucks taking the outgoing Prime Minister's household possessions literally leave the Prime Minister's residence and office, Number Ten Downing Street within hours. The new Prime Minister's moving truck has unloaded by the following morning.

How can this be possible? First of all, Prime Ministers are much more experienced than new American presidents in the duties of government when they take office. On average, British Prime Ministers arrive at Number Ten with more than a dozen years and sometimes much more in the House of Commons. Further, most of them have been Cabinet ministers in major departments in earlier governments. Also, Prime Ministers almost always name as Cabinet colleagues and sub Cabinet colleagues individuals who also have had many years of experience in the House of Commons and as ministers at some level.

The second reason is that the British system builds in a high level of continuity by tasking its highly trained civil service with high level policy jobs. In fact, a new Prime Minister names only about 150 or so political party colleagues to the total of all ministerial jobs in the numerous departments of governments. This compares to about 10,000 political appointments in the Washington governmental structure.

While a new President enters a nearly empty White House, a new British Prime Minister by contrast is greeted by a very large staff of civil servants when he or she enters Number Ten. Yes, a Prime Minister does bring along several dozen political advisers, but the group of civil servants is much larger: ready and willing to work diligently as is their tradition, for the new Prime Ministers as they worked only hours before for the outgoing administration on the business of governing.

The point about all this is to wonder and perhaps consider whether the American system is less effective than it might be if we had a British style continuity featuring a highly trained civil service and a smaller cadre of politial appointees? It is no advantage, especially in challenging times as now, for a new administration to arrive to nearly bare walls and no staff in the White House. Obviously new administrations want to enjoy great latitude and leverage in crafting their own policies, but that does not need to be at the expense of greater continuity, expertise and institutional memory.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown Probably Didn’t Want to Go Home

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must have wished that he could just stay in Washington, and not go back to London. The joint session of Congress, which he addressed, gave him either 17 or 18 standing ovations, depending on who was doing the counting. Of course his critics pointed out that Tony Blair received a couple of more! But for the Prime Minister this was the best moment he’s had since he took over from Tony Blair more than a year an a half ago.

To be fair Brown had a 3 month political honeymoon at the beginning and a good couple of months last fall when the economic and financial crisis first hit Britain, and he successfully argued that as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years under Blair he was the man to steer Britain through the crisis.

But since roughly early December Brown’s popularity and that of his Labour Government have been tracking downward at a steady pace in every public opinion poll. The problem has been really twofold. After gaining early support for his “expertise” in financial and economic matters (he is also a Ph.D economist) the steep decline in the British economy has made the electorate fearful and impatient, especially about rising unemployment. Second, and more recently, Brown’s years as Chancellor are now being seen as a liability rather than an asset. In fact, the general growing view is that Brown participated no less even lead the failure of this Labour Government to exercise good oversight over Britain’s banking and financial industry so in some way is complicit and even responsible for the crisis. Further, there are even his own Cabinet colleagues who are calling for Brown to apologize (some of them have even apologized themselves) for his and the Blair government’s mistakes. To that Brown says no, there is no need to apologize because the origins of the current crisis were really in the United States and that Britain is suffering the consequences.

What is also plaguing Brown, and not President Obama at this point, is the problem of leading an “old” government plagued by the accumulated problems of nearly 12 years in power. Although Brown himself has been Prime Minister for less than two years, he was a part of this Labour Government for the other nearly 10 and as such has to carry the burden of what might be called geriatric politics. Governments age as do humans, and in terms of political longevity, Brown government is really equal to a senior citizen with all the aches and pains of old age. Out of ideas and out of first line political leaders, and indeed the further burdened of inevitable accumulated mistakes, scandals, etc, the Labour Government is suffering the same kind of symptoms and troubles that older governments always suffer beginning somewhere after four or five years and which get progressively worse.

Public opinion polls in Britain are now settling down to a historically familiar pattern showing the opposition Conservatives a dozen or more points ahead. It is likely that Brown will not call an election until he must, which is not for another 16 months unless he has the good fortune, as he did at the beginning of the crisis last fall, to get a sudden boost in popularly. But the odds are that Labour will soldier along and hope its losses are not too great in the next election, leading to not too a long stretch in opposition.

Being Bipartisan is Not a British Concern

The Congressional struggle over President Obama's stimulus bill involved charges and countercharges about excessive partisanship. Republicans complained that the Democratic majority including the new President did not fulfill his promise to be more bipartisan, while the Democrats complained that the Republicans are just a party of "no". For observers of the British system, however, the question of partisan behavior looks very different than the argument heard in Washington.

The starting point for a comparison between the British and American systems is to keep in mind that they are very different, even though both are among the world's oldest democracies. The British have a unitary Parliamentary system . The United States is a Presidential system with divided powers of checks and balances between Congress and the President. By contrast, the Executive and Legislative branches in Britain are in effect fused together. The Prime Minister in Britain actually sits in the House of Commons . A Prime Minister wins office by first being chosen to lead a political party which either currently holds or subsequently wins a majority in the House of Commons . Thus, Prime Ministers are not directly elected by British voters. British voters only cast a vote for one national office when they go to the polls: for their local Member of Parliament ( the House of Commons). Notice therefore the contrast between the British procedure and the American system in which the President is specifically chosen by the electorate from all the federally based states. Presidents thus owe their election directly to the voters, while Prime Ministers owe their selection to members of their political party.

Once chosen, Prime Ministers lead their majorities in the House of Commons with "discipline". They can count on the vote of their colleagues on nearly every issue they regard as important in the work of Parliament. By the same token, the leader of the opposition party can count on an equally disciplined group of members in the House of Commons nearly always voting with him or her against the Government of the day.

Thus, political combat on the national level is clear cut and between the parties with little complaining about partisanship. Partisanship is indeed the name of the game as an elected majority party is expected to, with discipline, implement the program they offered to the electorate in order to attract votes in national elections. So the question of being bipartisan, or in the way American politicians are condemned for being "too" partisan, really does not arise in Britain. Votes in the House of Commons on important issues are nearly always predictable in that the government wins nearly every time. In short, the British Government has been elected to do what it thinks best in terms of policy making and policy implementation.

This might suggest that the British system is actually a form of dictatorship rather than the democracy we always attach to Britain. In fact, much of the notion of British democracy is bound up in the free and clean elections that give British voters a real choice in deciding who will govern them. But there is more than that which is democratic: governments of each party carry out a longstanding tradition of consultation with both interest groups and political party oppositions about the details of policy in drafting, legislating and even implementing laws. Further, in the case of opposition political parties, there are clear times set aside in Parliament when the opposition gets the chance to fully state and debate their views on every piece of legislation, and when bills are examined in committee before final passage opposition politicians have the chance, with a serious hearing from the government to criticize and offer amendments to even the most important government bills.

But even though parties can criticize and even get an influential hearing from the government it does not mean that British governments negotiate the terms of policy per se or indeed worry about bipartisan relations with their opposition, including agreements about the details and style of government. Its just "not on", as governments are still expected to proceed to do what they think best in the end. Thus, by comparing the British experience, we learn that there can be important and real democracy without bipartisanship.