Obama more like George III than Cameron

It could have been much worse. Most Europeans, even conservatives, were dreading the prospect of ‘President’ Mitt Romney, an obvious fraud whose voters are angry ageing white men and whose sponsors are half nasty and half crazy. And there was an almost worse prospect, of a rerun of 2000 and the grotesque farce in Florida — or alternatively of Barack Obama winning a majority in the preposterous Electoral College, but not a majority of the popular vote and having his legitimacy challenged for the next four years.

Even as it is, the situation in Washington is bad enough, as the re-elected Obama faces a bitterly hostile House of Representatives, yet again a dismal reflection of the American political system. No doubt anti-Americanism can take odious forms, but pro-Americanism is almost more curious. Not only the Anglo-neocons in the British Conservative party, but some Labour politicians — Gordon Brown as well as Tony Blair — and liberal pundits are infatuated by all things American, including their written constitution, and a political culture which Britishers are told they should emulate. To the contrary, I suggest Britishers have nothing at all to learn about politics from across the Atlantic.

In their way, the founding documents of the American republic are remarkable. The Declaration of Independence, the constitution and the Bill of Rights are written in limpid Augustan prose which can be read for literary pleasure, a contrast indeed to the equivalent documents of the European Union, with their rebarbative bureaucratese. And never mind the fact that the declaration demands a free hand to deal with “merciless Indian savages” or that the constitution implicitly recognises slavery.

The trouble was that the constitution was set in stone, or at least on parchment. A political system designed by a group of 18th-century country gentlemen and radical artisans, with its various expedients and compromises, including the fiction of the Electoral College, is supposed to work for all time. Meanwhile, what the Victorian writer Walter Bagehot called “the English constitution” had evolved out of all recognition, and rather brilliantly. A country ruled in 1830 by a narrow oligarchy supported by a corrupt House of Commons, for which only about one in 20 male citizens could vote, became, within 100 years, a full democracy with every man and woman over 21 enfranchised.

By the late 19th century, England’s unwritten constitution was distinguished by two excellent features that America does not possess: Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary government — the monarch reigned but did not rule and the prime minister was whoever commanded a majority in the lower or representative house, which is called the House of Commons in Britain. That was true of the age of Gladstone, but not 100 years before, when George III was his own chief executive and could appoint Pitt at his pleasure without concern for any parliamentary majority.

And that explains an unremarked but curious fact. While American founding fathers were in conscious reaction against England, they unconsciously echoed its political culture. With the constitution cementing that, it means American politics today is closer to British politics at the time the Americans rebelled than British politics today, and Obama resembles George III more than David Cameron (politically rather than personally, that is). He is head of state and chief executive and does not need, or indeed now have, a congressional majority. Like the king, he has to barter with the legislature, using cajolery, bribery or appeals to loyalty.

The resemblance goes even further. Congress is more like parliament under George III than under George VI. The House of Lords may be absurd, but it is not more absurd than the Senate. Wyoming, with its 570,000 inhabitants, sends two senators to this bizarre body, and so does California, with 40 million. Even worse, since 1913, senators have been elected by popular vote. Until then, they had been chosen by state legislatures, as is still true elsewhere.

During arguments over Britain’s House of Lords, it was said Britain was the only country without an elected upper house, which is quite untrue. In federal countries, the upper houses represent not the people but constituent states: The Bundesrat in Germany consists of people not elected by voters, but chosen by state governments. Direct election of the Senate conferred a wholly unjustified appearance of democratic legitimacy on a wildly unrepresentative body.

As for the House of Representatives, it is an American version of the corrupt, unreformed British House of Commons so memorably dissected by Sir Lewis Namier. Although the House is elected every two years, a high proportion of districts are effectively uncontested, with only a minority of citizens voting. This month’s turnout was actually more than 60 per cent, which is high by American standards. In the midterm elections two years ago, it was 41 per cent.

And anyone who thinks that wrangles in Britain over constituency boundaries were unseemly and driven by party interest, should look at maps of the weirdly-shaped congressional districts — carved out for naked partisan purposes.

If the American system is dysfunctional, that dysfunction is preordained. Institutions designed 230 years ago for a handful of almost entirely agrarian colonies with a population of fewer than four million are supposed to operate in a vast, advanced industrial nation of 314 million. Is it any wonder they don’t work? And might not the Americans have something to learn from Britons — rather than Britons from them?

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of The Strange Death of Tory England.