Anderson Shumate, a student at North Carolina State University, has this column, “What Can We Learn from Canada?” about the freedom of Canadian voters to use their votes to revise national government. Shumate (so far, anyway) has more insight than the leading pundits and columnists of major U.S. media, who should be making this point. The column appears in The Technician, the university’s student newspaper.
I didn’t notice any insight. What the heck does “Canadians tends to sculpt political parties around the interests of the community” mean.
Let’s start with the parliamentary form of government. Canada doesn’t have a president, and its senate is appointed and relatively weak.
Imagine that the USA had a parliamentary system of government. If you were dissatisfied with the Pelosi or Boehner you would vote for the MC of the opposite party. But neither of those two would have risen to leadership in their party. And if someone wanted to be PM, they couldn’t bypass Parliament, and run for Senate, Governor, or directly for president. How many cabinet secretaries come from the US House?
Compare with the office of governor. Independents have been elected governor, and governors from the minority party have been elected. For example Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois have Republican governors. But there is zero chance of a Republican carrying these states for President. In two of those state, the Republican turned out an Democrat incumbent seeking re-election.
You couldn’t run for Congress on the promise of bringing home the bacon. If your party lost the election, there would be no bacon.
And since the governments were completely separate, there would be separate elections, and more infrequently, every 54 or 5 years. In federal elections you would vote for an MC. In state elections you would vote for an MLA. Perhaps there would be regular elections for the county assembly or city council.
Canada is far better governed than the U.S. is. Canada didn’t have a housing bubble burst in September 2008. Canada didn’t have a banking crisis at that time. Canadian voter turnout earlier this week as over 71%. All Canadian voters had a choice of five parties or more earlier this week. Canada doesn’t deprive residents of its capital city of voting representation in Parliament. Canada doesn’t deprive ex-felons from voting. Canada has non-partisan redistricting.
The student’s article didn’t mention any of those insights in his insightful article.
You didn’t explain what he meant by “Canadians tends to sculpt political parties around the interests of the community.” Maybe you could explain why he used a singular verb with a plural subject.