London Calling

The British parliamentary elections are today, and they've taken an astonishing development. In this campaign, the leaders of the two major parties, the Conservatives and Labour, along with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, held an American-style debate on television. The leader of the party that wins the most seats in Parliament normally becomes the prime minister of Great Britain; he or she is ceremonially appointed by the Queen (who does everything ceremonially) based on the electoral results.

The debates mirrored the press-conference style joint job interviews we Americans mistake for a debate in the literal sense - so much, in fact, that I groaned at the idea of the Brits importing yet another bad American idea (as with hip-hop) and adopting it as their own. But an unforeseen development has taken place.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has gotten a lot of favorable press and free publicity for holding his own against and sounding fresher than Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Leader of the Opposition David Cameron in the debates. His party have been given another look by the British public, and his party stands to make a more than respectable showing in today's voting. The party manifesto, for lack of a better word, goes like this:

"The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives."

This ain't no Tea Party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.

The Conservatives had been leading for weeks over Labour, in power for thirteen years, but the Liberal Democrats have been surging as a result of Clegg's debate performance. Still, a third of British voters are undecided, so the election could go any way. While the Liberal Democrats may not win a majority in the House of Commons, they may win enough seats to deny the major parties an outright majority and force a coalition government to be formed. And this is all because of a third-party leader having a great debate performance.

In the United States, the equivalent of a coalition government would likely be formed if a third party won enough seats in both houses of Congress to influence the major party caucuses and forced the presidential election into an Electoral College deadlock to be decided by the House (which would choose the President) and the Senate (which would choose the Vice President). Don't hold your breath. The electoral system in America is set up to make it impossible for third parties to prosper due to arcane ballot laws requiring more signatures for a petition to get on the ballot than a minor party candidate could ever hope to get. Third parties in the U.S. have historically managed to only siphon off enough votes from a major party candidate to deny him a victory.

The one time a viable third party seemed plausible is when Ross Perot ran for President in 1992 as an independent - his movement would become the Reform Party - and participated in the debates with Republican President George Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. (Based on Perot's standing in the polls, the debate commission let him in the debates. They had to.) Perot won 19 percent of the vote in that election without being a spoiler; he took as many votes from one major candidate as he did from the other. A new, viable party seemed within reach. Reality, of course, soon set in.

This is why I continue to believe that the British, for all the problems they have, are superior to us. They've been able to produce a system that allows for a third voice to be heard in public affairs and encourages greater participation in the electoral process. And then there's America, where we don't even allow a second voice to be heard in public affairs. On the one hand, as Bill Maher has said, we have one party that's beholden to corporate interests . . . and on the other hand, we have the Republicans.

With the use of televised debates -first pioneered in America half a century ago - the British have taken the American innovation of representative democracy and improved upon it, much like they did with rock and roll. But they still can't match American hip-hop.

Which is nothing for us to brag about.