My Misunderstood Country

The peculiarities of both the political system and U.S. society explain many of the differences that some Europeans do not understand.

“The system is broken.” This is the motto of the Republican candidates for the White House, who are criticizing the way in which President Obama is managing the economy and many other matters. It is a simple critique that comes very often from any candidate or party in the opposition. What turned out to be even more worrying was an argument I had this week with a socialist friend; it was useful to remember how many misunderstandings there are on this side of the Atlantic about my country, the United States. He described the American economy as “rotten” when mistaking the quality of our democracy for the policies he disagrees with.

As a proof, he mentioned four aspects still to be done: eliminate the free sale of guns, increase taxes on the rich, pass a public health law and approve an ambitious plan for employment and recovery. I have been living in Spain for a long time and I have learned how to guess the political affiliation of an individual according to his reaction to the fact that I am American. It is not striking that right-wing people react more favorably than left-wing people, although my friends and the conversations with them are full of what Obama calls teachable moments.

The situation of our welfare state and the lack of public health in the United States are horrors for any European socialist and for many of us from left-wing America. However, the comparative policy is cheating; we tend to see and judge the policies of other countries through our own cultural viewpoints. We have to examine the system of government and the American culture in order to better understand those issues within American politics. The presidential system of government in the United States is very different from the parliamentary system in Spain. Both systems have pros and cons, which I am not going to explain in detail here. Nevertheless, why Obama has not obtained “change” can be understood by studying our system of government, which was specifically designed for making the change slow and difficult to protect us from capricious politicians.

Moreover, voters directly elect the congressmen of their districts and states — there are not lists chosen by the leaders of the parties — and so they are not forced to vote for their party or their president. Because of that, every time a vote matters to Obama, he has to lobby both Democrats and Republicans. Now that we are in a presidential campaign, it is almost impossible to collaborate with the most moderate Republicans. However, there are cases, above all in law, in which the press pays less attention to them.

The dark side of our system of government is the private funding of political campaigns. The decision in the Citizens United case by the Supreme Court in January 2010 has intensified the problem by stating that companies are entitled to freedom of speech. In effect, they are individuals entitled to fund political communication as they like and without transparency through some types of political action committees or Super PACs. This decision reduces our democracy, but it is through democracy that we have to rectify it.

A More Conservative Electorate

As well as the political system, the electorate of the American culture is far more conservative than any of its European friends. The last survey carried out by Pew Research Group, “The American-Western European Values Gap,” details, among other things, the difference in values between Americans and Europeans regarding their attitudes toward individualism and the role of the State. 58 percent of Americans think that it is more important that everyone should be free to pursue the challenges of their lives without the interference of the State, whereas only 35 percent declare that it is vitally important that the State plays an active role in society to assure that nobody is in need. This is the opposite of what happens in Spain, where the figures are 30 percent and 67 percent respectively.

Personally, I do not like guns, but there are people, including Democrats, who defend the right to maintain and use them, something which is guaranteed in our constitution. Taxes are a deeply rooted issue in our political culture, which values a limited government and a free market. The conservatives support those values in all cases, including health, and we progressives think that access to health must be guaranteed by the government for ethical issues. The lack of a public health care system in the United States is not due to a rotten democracy, but to an electorate that do not yet have a majority convinced of implementing it.

That is precisely why several movements such as the tea party and Occupy Wall Street have so much importance. They change the approach of the national conversation in the press — and then, in the street — by moving the electorate toward the right wing or the left wing and making this cultural change so elusive. I do not agree with the tea party and the conservatives, but freedom of speech and the vote are the essence of democracy. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Meanwhile, our system assures that we do not come closer to the extremes. Political and cultural systems are the key to understanding the countries beyond our borders, but this requires more mental effort. It is easier and more dramatic to blame democracy for it. However, we do not learn anything this way.