Let's not be too hard on the Bush camp - they DO make a difference in Iraq. A difference if you compare electoral systems.

While Iraqis will be going to the polls and enjoy the pleasure of voting for proportional representation, like much of the rest of the world, Americans themselves are still stuck with their winner-takes-all system, which nobody had ever considered the apex of democratic expression of voters' preferences in the first place. This first-past-the-post system just manages to guarantee stable governments for a given period since it makes minority or coalition governments next to impossible. That's its only merit and nobody has ever disputed this fact.

One could add: Stable conditions? So does a dictatorship.

While a disquieting proportion of American progressives are, at least from the looks of it, once again playing the old right-wing game of concentrating on individual persons instead of on issues (like: Who should be the next candidate? Why was the last one not the right one? How can one prevent a constitutional amendment that might enable Arnie to run for president?), in European progressive eyes they are barking up an entire forest of wrong trees.

One couldn't exactly denounce it as a reckless and rash move to demand a radical overhaul and change of a system which is the oldest one in the world to have survived more than a couple of centuries, could one? Now THAT would be a worthy issue!

No other country is still governed by rules which were laid down at some stage during the 18th century and in those days looked very radical to the outside world. So why does America, why do American progressives think that 18th century ideas about power and the distribution of same are still good enough? Has the world, has America, changed that little since then?

A lot of the American misery these days has a lot less to do with people, their character, their army careers, their wives, their children, their dogs, their presumed IQs - but with structures, that's the way it looks from across the Atlantic.

The office of the US president as such, this elected king for 4 years, has more power than is good for any officeholder. It's far too imperial. Which is why hardly any (democratic) country around the world envisages a similar concentration of power.

Even Alexis de Tocqueville thought that the power and remit of the American president as such were bound to attract the wrong people, although he was full of admiration for the system in his writings. But that was at a time when the USA was one of the very few democracies on earth.

I am not so sure that he would be that impressed today.

How outdated this system is, is amply illustrated by the very fact that the present American administration suggests different models, i.e. PR, for a country they proclaim to want to guide into democracy. And surely they'd only go for the best, wouldn't they? They've got more than enough trouble in Iraq already, after all!

And their proposal shows that a modern democracy's structure does not look like the American system. A modern system makes sure that most voters' opinion is considered and represented in decision-making bodies. Proportional representation. Find out more if you go to http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm

If I could utter a Christmas wish, I'd wish that every American who is dissatisfied with the way things are in the US today would begin to challenge the way America is governed. Go for the Structures. Demand a new Philadelphia Convention! Get rid of an election system that stifles people and leads to unhealthy compromises! Get rid of a system where you have to attack someone like Nader because he might spoil a majority in some state!

And please stop wondering who's got the right "character" or "leader" qualities, friends! That's really a right-wing game, and it's always, always been a right-wing game, and if that's the only game you know, then you've just always been playing their game! No wonder they are better at it than you!

It is clear to me that someone out there in Washington D.C. must have definite ideas of what a democracy ideally should look like since they keep proposing these ideas to fledgling democracies.

Isn't it time they shared these ideas with the American people as well?

Brigitte Schön (b.schoen@chello.at) is an Austrian conference interpreter, occasional writer and political activist. She lives in Vienna, Austria.

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