The American system of government is a shockingly messy and complicated one, but the way it gets covered –- with glitzy, big-money races for the presidency every four years, a narrative that elides congressional and Senate races, the electoral college, the actual responsibilities of the three branches, etc. — makes it seem like a simple war between two roughly equal opposing camps. Even the players like to pretend that there are two “benches,” thus encouraging all kinds of pointless armchair quarterbacking.
In comparison, parliamentary democracies at least have the decency to keep a lot of their complications right out in the open. All the same, here in Canada, because we were so used to majority governments mostly being passed back and forth between two parties, with one (the NDP) acting as spoiler, we saw our government as essentially simple, too.
The recent string of minority governments should have taught us all a lesson, but it hasn’t.
