King Donald

Wow! It looks like Trump and I agree on one thing, anyhow: The US President is an elected monarchy. That perception isn't mine, but I agree it's the best way to understand a head of government who is also a head of state.

But Trump is a but fuzzy on the concept, to put it politely. His claim that the President has a "sovereign prerogative" shows he thinks a King has absolute power. No mere judge may criticise, let alone set aside, an executive order.

I doubt very much that Trump came up with phrase by himself. So who's the power behind the throne, pulling the strings?

Politics 101: Proportional voting

The kerfuffle has died down, but I suspect that the rage of the extremist supporters of proportional voting will resurface during the next election in 2020. (2017-02-27)

Right now, there’s a kerfuffle about Justin Trudeau’s backtracking on changing Canada’s electoral system. He promised that 2016 would be the last election using first-past-the-post or  plurality voting. Some form of proportional representation would replace it.

A lot of people don’t like plurality voting. We have three strong parties: Conservative, Liberal, and New Democratic, each with regional strengths and weaknesses. The Green Party regularly gains 3 to 5% across all ridings (1), and wins in one. In addition we have the Bloc Quebecois, a purely local party, but which has won large numbers of Quebec seats in the past. Each major party wins majorities in some seats, and all have widely varying regional support. The Liberals tend to win in the East, and the Conservatives in the West. The NDP is mostly urban.

The result is that national support between 35 and 40% is enough to form a government. (2) If enough people vote their support rather than their opposition, we tend to get minority governments, in which no Party holds a majority of the seats.

People give various reasons for thinking this is an unfair system. Chief of these is this observation: with roughly 40% support and a roughly 60% voter turnout, about 25% of voters voted for the government, while 75% voted against it. It seems manifestly unfair that only one in four voters determine who governs. Worse, the distribution of seats does not reflect popular support. What about the values and views of those whose vote was cast differently? They will not be heard, it seems. What about people who voted for a losing party? Their vote doesn’t count, it seems. So why vote?

Let’s dispose of the unfairness argument immediately. There is in fact no fair voting system. Several mathematical proofs and demonstrations show that all systems can (and therefore sooner or later will) produce results that most voters do not like. Some will do so most of the time.

Plurality with three or more strong parties magnifies the difference between popular support and distribution of seats, which practically guarantees voter dissatisfaction.

Ranked voting tends to favour second and third choices, practically guaranteeing weak support for the government. Weak support translates into dissatisfaction very quickly.

Runoff voting, like plurality, magnifies the difference between popular support and seats won, since it masks low support for the eventual winner.  Like ranked voting, it guarantees weak support for the government.

Proportional voting almost always results in minority governments, which usually require formal or informal coalitions. Coalitions magnify the power of minority views and values, and of single-issue parties, which tend to be extreme. (3)

In short, all voting systems will skew the vote one way or another. They all cause different kinds of mismatch between what people want and what they get.

So the question becomes not, What kind of voting system do you want? but rather, What kind of skewed voting or unfairness can you accept, and why? And the complementary one, What kind of unfairness can you not tolerate, and why?

I do not like “proportional representation”, as its supporters usually term it. I have two reasons, the magnification of extreme views, and the magnification of the power of the Party.

Proportional representation encourages the formation of parties with extreme views. Three or more strong parties will result in minority government. That forces collaboration and even coalition. That’s a good thing, and if politics were on the whole a process for reasonable people to figure out what they want to do and how to do it, I’d have no qualms. But politics is about power, and in the pursuit of power people are not reasonable. To achieve a working majority, the government may have to act on extreme views from one or more small parties to ensure the votes it needs. If it can’t do that, there’s instability. (4)

I don’t like extreme views. They are always held by a minority, thus not only do not reflect the majority view, but always oppose them. Holders of extreme views are generally incapable of admitting the validity of different ones, not even those that are similar. That’s a recipe for trouble, of political and civil divisions, and, too often, bloodshed. Any voting system that gives extreme views more effective power than their numbers warrant is bad. (5) Proportional representation encourages people with extreme views to form Parties, knowing that the odds are that they will get at least a seat or two, and with luck may use those few seats to exert influence on the coalition.

Proportional representation always means slates of candidates, one way or another. (6) Slates are determined by Parties. This means that the power of the Party machine becomes stronger. The Party machine does not like local control of candidate selection, since that makes it easier for a group of  determined local voters to frustrate the will of the Party. Slates make it easier for the machine to prevent that.

I prefer the plurality system, despite its flaws, because it magnifies local control, and it forces all parties to appeal as best they can to the average voter, the so-called mushy middle. There we find a variety of political views and values, ideas that often contradict each other, and the human inconsistency that makes collaboration not only possible but necessary. Parties that have to appeal to that mushy middle don’t drift too far to the left or right. When they begin to do so, they are replaced by the other party.

Bottom line: I don’t mind that Trudeau backtracked on his promise. If I had to choose another system, I’d go with runoffs. Ranked voting does not predict run-off voting, which forces the voter to think twice, which tends to change people’s minds.

Notes:
(1) A riding is an electoral district. We elect “Members of Parliament” who sit in the House of Commons. We do not elect Senators.
(2) The Party that wins the most seats forms the government. If it has less than half the seats, it’s a “minority government”.
(3) Neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis won a majority of seats before they came to power.
(4) See Italy, which changes its government about every 18 months.
(5) See Israel. Most Israelis want peace with the Palestinians, but the government is hamstrung by extreme right-wing nationalist parties whose votes it needs.
(6) Slates are ranked by the Party. If your Party wins 10 seats, you’ve voted for the top 10 members of the Party list, whether you want them all or not.

Update 2020: Trudeau called an election in 2019, and achieved a minority, largely because the Conservatives had a gormless leader in Andrew Scheer, and because regional loyalties in Quebec and the West outweighed national ones. The Green elected three members, a major win for them.
     Scheer tried to look like your friendly barbecuing neighbour, but couldn't convince enough people that he enjoyed a beer. He actually looked like the hustling insurance salesman he claimed to be but wasn't. The knives came out almost immediately. Scheer also "won the popular vote", which is true if one ignores the fact that the lemming-like mass-vote for the Conservatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan made up that surplus "popular vote."
     The current covid-19 pandemic has given Canadian leaders the opportunity to act, and to look like they know what they're doing. Both Trudeau and Doug Ford (Premier of Ontario) surprised by their competence and caring. The Conservatives could have placed themselves as supportive, caring, and constructive critics of Trudeau's measures, but instead fell back on whinging about debt. The two seekers for the party leadership have not made much of a positive impression on non-Conservatives, and probably not even on Conservatives.
     Would proportional voting have made much of a difference to the current Parliament? Possibly, depending on the system adopted. That heavily regional "popular vote" win would have given Alberta and Saskatchewan too much power over the rest of Canada, which would increase the regional divisions. I doubt that a Conservative government would have rushed to create the financial supports created by the Trudeau Liberals with Bloc and NDP support. It's significant that Doug Ford, a small-c conservative by instinct, praises the co-operation between his Conservative Provincial Government and the Federal Liberals.

Early Cary Grant vehicle

 

     The Amazing Adventure (1936) [D: Alfred Zeisler. Cary Grant, Mary Brian, Peter Gawthorne] A debilitated rich young man visits doctor who tells him he's suffering from money. Takes bet that he can’t last a year on his own, earning his own living. Finds out how the other half lives, also discovers that some people are kind, and some people are crooks. Helps first employer launch his extra-special cook-stove, defeats crooks, finds true love, rewards those who were kind, and fades out on clinch with wife who like him was taking a year off to earn her own money. The movie is barely an hour long, looks and feels like it was cut from a longer version. Pity. **

Two Thomases: Sympathetic Cromwell, Sleazy More

     Wolf Hall (2015; based on Hilary Mantel’s novels, who also worked on the screenplays) [D:Peter Kosminsky  Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy] Six episodes that give us a Thomas Cromwell quite different from the cynical villain of Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, and a sleazier Thomas More, too. The dangers of living in a polity in which personal loyalty to an erratic monarch was paramount, and an careless word or phrase could condemn you to death, are nicely explored. The dircetor wanted a few too many closeups of a silent Cromwell, etc, and the pace is slower than we’ve become used to lately, but it’s an impressive piece of work. Apparently it was filmed with ambient light only, a stunt made possible by recent advances in digital light sensors. Much of the action is set in dark interiors, I suppose to underline the darkness of the human heart.

     I now want to read the novels. Mantel clearly sides with Cromwell rather than More. Henry VIII is shown as self-deluding but respecting Cromwell because Cromwell won’t play the sycophancy game. Anne Boleyn is as much a victim of her own ambitions as of her family’s scheming for power. Wolsey is a wily old man who failed to achieve what his master wanted; Cromwell’s loyalty to him guides his plans, but at the end it’s unclear how much Cromwell wanted Anne’s death as a just punishment for bringing about Wolsey’s downfall. ***

US Trains of the 1940s

     Robert S. McGonigal, ed. Trains of the 1940s (2014) A Classic Trains special edition comprising articles published in the 1940s in Trains magazine as well some about the 1940s published in Classic Trains. A well done sampling of the railroads’ war work and post-war attempts to promote passenger travel. It’s an odd feeling to read about events of 70 years ago in the present tense. A few photographs show troops embarking or disembarking from trains. How many of the men in those pictures made it back home? The founder of Trains, A. C Kalmbach, wrote up some of his train trips. Nostalgia hits for anyone who grew up travelling on trains.
     Obviously a treat for the railfan, but also an excellent source for anyone who wants to know more about the 1940s in America. Well written, well produced. ***

Enemies of the Enlightenment

     Conor Cruise O’Brien. On the Eve of the Millennium (1994) CBC Massey lectures 1994. O’Brien meditates on the fate of the Enlightenment, which he sees as under attack. Agencies like the papacy attack it deliberately, for example by attempting to impose morals and ethics on individual conscience. But there are also those who claim to continue the work of the Enlightenment by bringing down institutions that they suppose to be hindering its advance. O’Brien points to the French Revolution and its heirs. He’s especially good on how Burke foresaw the process of that revolution, until it would eventually be replaced by an autocratic regime that restored order if not individual freedoms. Burke predicted that, but didn’t live to see it.
      O’Brien admires Burke, I think because he sees in Burke a powerful intelligence coupled with a deep understanding and respect for the irrational. I haven’t read much Burke (I’ve forgotten what I did read), so I can’t comment further on that part of O’Brien’s discussion. But it's clear that O’Brien himself understands the power of the irrational, and the dangers of reason put in the service of realising irrational aims.
     O’Brien’s predictions of what may happen in the first quarter of the 2000s are more or less off the mark in detail, but his clear-eyed view of  the forces that tend to break the democratic contract is spot on. Time has turned his analysis of democratic elections as popularity contests into a mordant comment on recent elections in all advanced countries, none more so that in the election of Trump and Justin Trudeau. The former is revealing himself as an incompetent governor; the latter as a good deal more competent than his enemies want him to be. Both are well on the way of disappointing their supporters.
      Like Machiavelli, whom he admires, O’Brien tells some unvarnished truths about politics and governance. He reminds us that a polity’s sense of itself as a unified community depends on myths, which serve both to obscure the unpalatable aspects of wielding power and to direct that power into more or less agreed on directions.
      This is not an easy read. O’Brien knows more history than the average bear, even one interested in history. He understands that ideas matter, especially ideas that have been reduced to what we think of as common sense. He has experience in politics and government. He’s a poet as well as an essayist. These lectures are dense in meaning and allusion. O’Brien’s attempts to clarify confusion with quotations and concrete examples go some way to helping the reader (me) understand. Nevertheless, worth reading. Twice at least. ***

Cats versus Rats

    Margaret Atwood, Johnnie Christmas, Tamara Bonvillain. Angel Catbird (2016) Well done pulp comic book fiction printed on nice book-weight glossy paper, including making-of material such as Christmas’s trial sketches of the main character, Strig Feleedus. He’s a nerdy biologist trying to perfect a genetic splicing drug.  Dr Mucoid, his evil villain boss, who want it to create a half-rat army, does a hit’n’run on him, which breaks the vial with the drug, which gets into his blood, along with some blood from his cat and an unfortunate owl. Hence Angel Catbird, a half-cat human with a dash of owl. A lovely succession of riffs on super-hero comics ensues. It'a all about cats versus rats. The script was written by Atwood, drawn by Christmas, and coloured by Bonvillain.
     Recommended. This is volume 1. Look for Volume 2 in February, and read it too. The book was shelved a Young Adult in our local library, which it’s not. ****