1789 and all that

Just to spell out what's been said before, the imminent dispute between George Bush and Congress over the funding of the Iraq war couldn't happen in a parliamentary system.

If in such a system the head of government was pursuing a war that the majority in the legislature did not support, either side would call a vote of (no) confidence. The head of government would lose the vote, and the governing party would either find a new leader who could command a majority in parliament by dumping the war, or call an election and there'd be a new leader with a similar mandate 4 weeks later. Alternatively, the legislature would lose its nerve and not bring down the head of government over the war, in which they'd have to take their lumps and fund the war as well.

But in the American system, the head of government can issue orders to the military and then challenge the legislature not to fund them. If they don't fund, the military has conflicting mandates and is paralysed -- and the president refers to a co-equal branch of government as traitors. The only other instrument of Congress is impeachment: difficult to mobilise and, if successful, putting Dick Cheney in the job.

So on it goes, a head of government accountable to no one except his own vision of how he'll appear in the history books. Perhaps the miracle is that they got 200+ years out of such a flawed system before it collapsed.