Interpreting | 2009.08.08
Political endeavor | Mark Lawson
Enthusiasm for a leaders\' debate is just the latest British effort to ape the ways of The West Wing
Although Britain becomes ever more a cultural 51st state of the US, there are certain references in popular culture that remain specifically American: baseball, the yellow school bus, and that line in a Paul Simon song about " going to the candidates\' debate ". But this week has seen the revival of the quadrennial effort to make that detail available to English songwriters, as Peter Mandelson floated the prospect of Gordon Brown and David Cameron going head-to-head on television during the next election.
Downing Street gave one of its confusing quarter head-shakes to the proposal, which may mean that Mandy is really running the country or that the prime minister is considering the possibility but leaving wiggle room. But the debate over the debate is part of a larger argument about the extent to which British politics should adopt American models – a discussion also raised by Cameron\'s decision to hold primary elimination rounds to choose a candidate to defend the Totnes seat at the next election, and by the axing of the law lords, who sat for the last time , and will be replaced from October by a body called, in a craven trans-Atlantic nod, the UK supreme court.
These moves reflect an obsession with Washington among the current political generation. The Blair, Brown and Cameron camps are all obsessed with The West Wing , and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that three of the most memorable editions of the NBC series deal with a primary election, a TV debate and the appointment of a new judge to the supreme court.
Future historians of British democracy may well express astonishment at the degree to which the premierships of the 90s and noughties were influenced by a fictional American leader played by Martin Sheen. Reports earlier in the summer suggested that Cameron aides were already consulting architects about how to make the offices in Downing Street look more like Josh\'s and Toby\'s.
As it happens, my idea of a near-perfect evening is three editions of The West Wing from series four or seven with a couple of glasses of cabernet sauvignon, but I also enjoy 24 , and no one seems to be suggesting British counter-terrorism forces should aim to solve all their cases in a single day and night while sweating a lot and making things up with their estranged daughters.
The problem with trying to ape the American way is that the structures often directly reflect aspects of the national culture. The tradition of televised presidential debates compensates for the fact that, in a non-parliamentary system, the challenger to the incumbent has no formal national forum in which to make a case. In the same way, the elaborate system of primaries grew from the power of states and the high degree of independence that a local Democrat or Republican party has. And the major business of the US supreme court has been to interpret the constitution, in a legal equivalent of the conflict among theologians about whether the Garden of Eden story is a report or a metaphor.
So it is not clear any of these ideas naturally apply to a country in which the heads of the two main parties have a live televised debate in each week of the parliamentary session; where the lists of local candidates are tightly controlled by national party HQs and in which there is no written constitution, expect perhaps a European one, which politicians are reluctant to mention.
Among these envied Americanisms, candidate debates would clearly be great fun for that section of the electorate that enjoys political television, although not since Nixon v Kennedy almost 50 years ago has a TV encounter had a direct impact on the result. And, if the next general election is fought between Brown and Cameron, it seems an unlikely prospect, because both candidates have so much to lose. Brown is the least telegenic British premier since Alec Douglas-Home, and Cameron is also wary of the medium, concerned that it emphasises the poshness of his vowels and the softness of his jowls. If Brown were to invite a contest, it would only be because he judged the situation to be so desperate that anything is worth a try.
The idea of local primaries, as in Totnes, is clearly tempting but advocates here should consider the fact that the run-off system in the states has been largely responsible for the escalating amounts spent on campaigning and TV commercials. Paradoxically, a proposal intended to widen the range of candidates and electoral scrutiny following the expenses scandal could lead to cash having a greater impact on candidacies.
And the US supreme court – a fascinating and sometimes awe-inspiring institution – is shaped by the ideals of a young nation born from rejection of the crown, so the label cannot simply be slapped on a body that emerged quite differently from a monarchy and a parliament. It is a simple case of vocabulary envy: as pointless as deciding to call Cameron the "minority leader on the floor" or term Sarah Brown "the first lady". In all of these cases, it might be better if The West Wing remains something on the DVDs, rather than the CVs, of the party leaders.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]l/30/britain-america-west-wing
