Part 2 of 2

We are facing gridlock in Washington, but parliamentary systems rarely see a lack of movement like we are experiencing. The main reason for this is that parliamentary systems are significantly more unified in their political views, ideas and values.

In our system, politicians much more often than not find themselves on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Let’s take a look at our health care system. By the world’s standards, our health care system is abysmal, and doesn’t even crack the top 35 best health care systems among countries of the world.

As of 2009, the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. at 37. Not exactly an accurate reflection of the idea that we consider ourselves the greatest country on Earth.

Before President Barack Obama tried to make health care universal, the Clinton administration had tried, and it has been tried before as far back as President Harry Truman in the late 1940s. All three faced intense opposition from hospitals, insurance companies and conservative parties. Countries with a parliamentary system, such as France (ranked No. 1 in health care in the world), faced no less opposition when they initially tried to make health care available to all of its citizens. The unity of the executive and legislative branches in the parliamentary system overcame the opposition, and now their citizens enjoy free health care in the best health care system on Earth.

More broadly, Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, are very often criticized when they make promises of what they plan to do when they take office, and once in office, fail to make good on those promises. The majority of the time, however, is because they face direct opposition from the legislative branch, not because they don’t try to follow through. As we have seen in our country today, the legislative branch (at least the House) is in opposition with the executive. Currently, it is not important to the Republican House that they succeed, it is only important if they can make the Democratic executive fail. The end result is that it is built into the constitution for our presidents to fail us.

With this perpetual political bickering America will have the pendulum of power swinging back and forth forever, with no party being in control long to enough to effectively get anything done. America is no longer a leader in the world with our current form of democracy, our economy, our education, our technology or our health care system. We have fallen behind many other developed countries by a significant margin.

Unless some serious constitutional revision is undertaken, America is doomed to limp pathetically forward, resulting from a constitution we refuse to improve because of an archaic ideology.