The Inherent Weakness of the US Federal Government System

Anybody who is a student of politics knows that the Founding Fathers of the United States built in a host of checks and balances into the Federal government in order to prevent any one branch of that government from becoming dominant. They had the right idea. Any man, regardless of how much they might believe in democracy, might be tempted to cast those beliefs aside once they gained power so the Founding Fathers built a system that would prevent that from happening. Or to put it another way, the Founding Fathers of the United States built a system that would prevent one of them from setting themselves up as a King.

The system worked and one result was the power of the United States grew until it became the most powerful country on the planet. However, the reason why the system worked was there was a general agreement on the objectives and goals of the United States and its government. Whoever held power could be counted on to work towards these objectives so politics in the United States was always about what means needed to be followed to meet the agreed upon ends not about changing those ends. There was a short breakdown of that general agreement in the 1860s but it was reestablished at great cost.

That began to change again during the Reagan years. Looking back to can begin to see that the consensus that had largely prevailed since 1776 was beginning to break down. It was not obvious at the time but the benefits of hindsight makes it very apparent now. That breakdown in the founding consensus of the United States continued and accelerated in the last 40 years to the point where it does not exist any more. At first the breakdown in the consensus was only among the ruling class of the United States but the events of January 6 has demonstrated that the breakdown in the consensus has reached ordinary Americans.

Looking at how ineffectual the American Federal Government has been for the past 40 years demonstrates the weakness of that system in addressing the breakdown in that consensus. Simply put, with Americans now trying to pull the country into different directions the US Federal Government is incapable of addressing the needs of its people in any meaningful and permanent way. The Founding Fathers all shared a vision of what the United States should be and they built a governing system to allow the realization of that vision. However, once that shared vision broke down the government system they built became paralyzed.

Many in the US talk about reestablishing bipartisanship in Washington and rebuilding unity in the country. However, that is only going to happen if Americans can come to another agreement of which direction they want their country to go. As long as that does not exist there will be no unity and the pressures that are pulling Americans apart will continue to do so, probably at an accelerated rate.  Americans have been through this before and they came out on the other side but doing so cost them a great deal. They might be able to do it again but it will probably be just as costly this time as well, assuming enough Americans can create the critical mass necessary to have any new united vision overcome the markedly different and competing visions that now prevail in the US.

Although the United States is a democracy with a democratic government the system that was created to safeguard that democracy was purposely created to be weak. Although that might have seemed like a good idea in the 18th century, after fighting a war to gain independence, it has proven to be completely ineffective in uniting the country when there is no single vision for the country.

The Republicans' Trump Problem

The events of January 6 were the logical culmination of the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. Donald Trump was the progeny of that movement and the authoritarian bent of Mr. Trump and his followers, both the professional politicians and ordinary Americans, is just an extension of the core beliefs of the Tea Partiers. Let's remember that Tea Partiers preached "smaller government" and preventing the "government from interfering" in the business of Americans but that was just propaganda. Their real goal was to use the power of government to punish anybody that did not share their beliefs and goals, which included outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage and making certain that America remained white, male, straight and Christian.

When they first showed up the Tea Partiers were rather extreme right-wingers for their time and they have tacked farther right since then, regardless of whether they failed, such as the two elections of President Obama, or succeeded, such as electing Donald Trump. That did not stop the Republican establishment from embracing them. They saw that the Tea Partiers could be a source of votes, funding and organization and although some expressed some reservations about bringing them into the Republican fold they were voices in the wilderness.

For awhile it worked. The Republicans enjoyed much success but like all radical groups that are used by more established organizations they outgrew their sponsors and eventually took it over. It was quite entertaining watching the more establishment candidates for the Republican nomination becoming increasingly terrified by the rise of Donald Trump in 2016.

And there is the problem. The Tea Partiers have been so energized by the election of Donald Trump and his subsequent loss of the presidency that they are in the position to hold the Republican Party hostage. While most Americans, including the Republican establishment, were outraged by the insurrection on January 6, Trump supporters were energized by it. They do not see anything wrong with what they did. They will not slink back under a rock feeling humiliated and remorseful. In fact they feel the exact opposite. They feel vindicated. They are going to continue to work to push their objectives on to the Republican Party. They are outnumbered by the more reasonable Republicans in the US but they are numerous and motivated enough to cause them troubles for the foreseeable future. For awhile the Tea Partiers were the tail that wagged the Republican dog and that is only going to become more pronounced in the coming years.

Before Donald Trump the Tea Partiers were an amorphous group. They did not have a single leader that their opponents could point to and say "Look that person is dangerous." That is no longer the case. The movement now has a standard bearer and that standard bearer managed to convince over 80 million Americans to come out and vote against him on November 3 and it managed to convince millions of Georgians to come out on January 5 to replace two incumbent Republican senators with Democrats. As long as Donald Trump is still around and as long as he is still someone his followers can rally around he is going to motivate large numbers of people to come out and vote for and against him and in the two cases where that really mattered, in the past three months, the Republicans lost.

This is not to say the Republicans will always lose but Donald Trump could be a drag on their electoral fortunes for some time and in a political climate where margins of victory are often not much greater than 1 percentage point that could be trouble for the Republicans. 

The Limitations of Polling

I really wish that pollsters would have a few more scruples when they are asked to do a poll by the media. There are issues that just cannot be adequately handled by a poll and they should tell their clients and decline to do the poll.

This train of thought occurred to me when I read a poll yesterday (by a pollster who shall remain nameless) that essentially stated that a very large plurality of Canadians would like to see reduced trade with China. My immediate reaction was "What a useless polls." My second reaction was that the poll could be very damaging, if people actually took it seriously, which fortunately most people do not.

Why was it useless? Trade with China is way too complex of an issue to be encompassed in a single polling question or even a series of polling questions.

One issue is China is the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. Virtually everything the average person buys is made in China. If you happen to shop at a Dollar Store you are buying things made in China. Walmart is able to sell products for a "reasonable price" because they are made in China. The computer that I am using to type this post was assembled in China and it is very likely that Chinese companies had a hand in the manufacturing of the device you are using to read this post. So the real question a pollster needs to ask is "Would you be willing to pay higher prices for cloths, computers and cell phones in order to reduce trade with China?" I am pretty certain that the response to that question would be a resounding "No".

A second issue is how would we be able to prevent trade with China? Countries do not trade. Companies are the entities that drive trade. It is a simple fact that Western companies went to China a long time ago because they could take advantage of lower costs to manufacture their products. I am wearing a shirt that I bought at The Bay for about $40. If that shirt had been manufactured in a textile mill in Ontario the retail price would probably still be about the same but the margin for the manufacturer would be much less because the salaries that would be required to pay the workers at that Ontario textile mill would be much higher than the wages that would need to be paid to Chinese workers. Simple business logic dictates that the manufacturer would stay in China which brings us back to the question that started this paragraph. 

A third issue is who would prevent trade with China? The obvious message from the poll and the explanation from the pollster was the government was responsible for this issue, although he never really identified the issue in concrete terms. Of course, the only way for a government to reduce trade with another country is to make it too expensive for companies to operate in foreign countries or to bribe domestic companies not to move their operations, by means of tariffs and/or subsidies. Of course, tariffs just leads to retaliation from the other country and everybody loses and most of the time companies funnel subsidies to their stockholders and move their operations to low cost jurisdictions anyway. So there is no way for a government to prevent a company from moving its operations or to prevent trade with another country. 

All of these issues make the issue of trade with China much too complex to be usefully addressed by a poll. So the pollster should not have even tried. They did and yet again pollsters and their clients in the media further dumbed down the discourse over what is a very important issue. They make it look like the issue is an easy one to address so that when governments and business find themselves having to live the complex reality they are seen as incompetent. It does a great disservice to Canadians and I am not certain whether it is just ignorance on the part of the pollsters and their media clients or a deliberate effort to misinform people. 

Politicians breaking COVID-19 Travel Restriction Guidelines

I am taking a bit of a break from politics for the holidays but it was hard not to notice the Finance Minister of Ontario having to resign because he decided to go on a Caribbean vacation and an NDP Member of Parliament being stripped of her critic role because of a trip to Greece.

Was it hubris or stupidity that caused these two individuals to make these ill advised trips.

Perhaps they believed that they could take the trips and if they got caught they would get away with it because of their positions. That would be hubris.

Perhaps they believed that they could take the trips because they believed they would not get caught. That is stupidity.

My guess is it was a little of both and in the case of Mr. Phillips he made it worse by making fake tweets on his location. In his case, I would lean more towards stupidity.

Like I said I am not paying that much attention so I am not closely watching what impacts these two events might be having but I also noticed today some media speculation of the location of the Prime Minister. Some are asking whether he is still in the country because he has not been seen for awhile. 

Since the PM has to use government transport to move around and the use of said transport is a matter of public record there is no way he could have traveled in or out of the country without being noticed. The media knows this so the fact some are asking a question for which they already know the answer might be an indication that the stupidity of Mr. Phillips and Ms. Ashton is having some negative impacts on their leaders and parties, particularly Mr. Ford and the PCPO. For a premier to lose a Finance Minister in that fashion has to hurt.