Getting The Government You pay For
by modern living editor Jason Capodimonte
American elections are one of those things which make me glad I'm not an American. Not as glad as I was back during the Vietnam War, when I would have been draft age in the States, but still pretty glad.
First of all, members of Congress are thinner on the ground than are members of parliament. There are currently 535 members of Congress – 435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate. The number of seats in the House of Representatives is fixed by the American constitution at 435, and the number of senators at two per state. The only way to increase the number of members of Congress, short of amending the American constitution, is to admit new states, and then you only bump up the count by two a time.
Anyway, at the moment, there is about one elected member of Congress for every 500,000 Americans. If we throw in the president and vice-president, who are also elected, that figure becomes about one in every, oh…500,000.
In Canada we’re considerably less constipated about this issue. The number of seats in the House of Commons is readjusted every ten years, according the results of the most recent census. The number usually goes up. There are currently 308 MPs, or about one for every 100,000 Canadians. That of course makes campaigning less expensive in Canada. Fewer pamphlets to print, fewer trips to make to shake hands, and lower transportation costs when you’re making those trips – urban ridings in Canada can be as small as a couple of square kilometres.
The biggest electoral constituency in the United States consists of the entire country. It is the constituency in which candidates for president run. Senators run in entire states. The presidential candidates have to buy TV airtime in all those states, for a start, while senatorial candidates have to buy it throughout the state.
In Canada, many candidates for MP, especially in the bigger cities, let the party central run the TV advertising. In Toronto, for example, it doesn’t make much sense to run his or her own commercials on Toronto TV stations when they will chiefly be seen by people in the 22 ridings you’re not running in. In the States, even candidates for the House of Representatives run their own TV ads.
We don’t let candidates spend a lot of money, anyway. I realize the world tends to see us Canadians as having a distinct greenish tinge, but, really, we’re more cabbage-looking. We don’t let the government have a big army to play around with, and we don’t let candidates spend a lot on their campaigns. And we give them public money for their campaigns to reduce the influence of the wealthy, whose contributions are also limited.
That’s not to say, of course, that Canadian politicians are uncorrupted by money, or that they are immune to pressure from financially powerful interests. On the other hand, socialism has died in the United States, at least as a political doctrine, and most of those whom Americans call liberals would be considered conservatives here. Canadian socialism is considerably watered down, but in comparison to Jack Layton the supposedly leftist Barack Obama sounds like Margaret Thatcher. Actually, Lady Thatcher was probably a bit to the left of Sen. Obama on health care.
The wealthy play far more important roles in American politics. Besides helping people build up the giant campaign budgets they need, those wealthy people who own media outlets also help by running supposed news broadcasts which are thinly veiled Republican political broadcasts. It is only now that the internet has provided media sources free of control by big corporations that someone like a Chris Matthews can be brought to account for his one-sided political commentary.
So in Canada we have more representatives per capita than Americans, we get a wider array of political opinions represented in our political life, and we pay far less to boot. What a deal! You’d think all the Americans who are so interested in reducing the cost of government would seize on the parliamentary system as their way to slash that government spending they’re always complaining about.
I guess they have to ask Rupert Murdoch first.
Getting the Government You Pay For © John FitzGerald, 2008
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