The US Political System: A View from the Confused UK

I currently reside in the UK. Many people I know or have overheard in pubs find the US political system extremely confusing. 

OK, they find other things confusing, like baseball and American football, just as Americans often find cricket, rugby, and FIFA football (soccer) confusing.  

Not surprisingly, Brits are articulating their confusion about US politics more often in the Trumpian Era. Much of their conversation since November 2024 relates to the question, How did the US "elect" a despicable charlatan like Trump twice? What about learning from experience?

I could have answered and sometimes did, "Well the UK voters made another charlatan, Boris Johnson, prime minister." True, but there is this difference: when people realized what a bloviating, bullshitting, devious narcissist Johnson was, they sent him packing. His own party did, in fact, responding to angry public opinion. 

That's one advantage the parliamentary system has over the presidential. Prime ministers serve at the pleasure of the party in power. Presidents serve fixed terms. It is extremely difficult to get rid of an incompetent or vile one before the next election. 

The Conservatives (Tories) mistakenly allowed their members to pick Johnson's successor. The members tend to opt for extreme candidates. Their choice was Liz Truss, who managed to nearly destroy the UK economy in just a few weeks. Tory MPs quickly pushed her out as well. Point taken.

Back to the UK view of US politics. The most common question after the 2016 election, was Why didn't Hilary Clinton get elected? She got 3 million more votes than he did. 

In order to answer that question, I had to try to explain the Electoral College, which of course has nothing to do with education. Have you ever tried to explain the English Wars of the Roses to glassy-eyed undergraduates? I have. I don't recommend it. 

I explained how the Founding Fathers in their wisdom created the Electoral College to prevent the US from becoming a democracy. They feared that the "people" would elect some nut who would threaten "property," including human property. The EC does not represent the "people." It represents the states, each of which has a certain number of "electoral" votes, based on their population, sort of.  

Three times in US history presidential candidates who lost the popular vote have become president, because they got a majority of electoral votes. 

The most recent time was in 2016, when the EC assured the "election" of a nut who wants to restore slavery and admires Hitler. Trump still claims that he won the popular vote in 2016, just as he continues to claim he won the 2020 election, not Biden.

Yes, the Founding Fathers wanted a republic but not a democracy. And they are not the same thing. A country can be a democratic republic. It can be an undemocratic republic. It can also be a democratic monarchy, like the UK and quite a few European countries. The monarchs in these countries have no real power. They are titular heads of state. 

Of course, all this was not enough to explain Trump's rise to power.  There were many more questions to answer, even tougher ones. 

To be continued. 

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