One of the benefits of a parliamentary system is that the Executive Cabinet is made up of elected ministers. This gives them a face, and some accountability outside of their ministry itself. As this article; Secretary Who? [reg] notes, in the Bush Cabinet there are a lot of unknown secretaries.

An elected cabinet has no better guarantee of accountability than an appointed one. Both the Howard Cabinet and Bush Cabinet contain members that should have resigned or been fired over issues that directly question the cabinet members direct competence to run their ministry (or department).

But Mark Vaile , as Minister for Trade, and as leader of the National Party is far more publicly visible than Carlos Gutierrez as Secretary of Commerce. This is despite Gutierrez being a former CEO of Kelloggs.

The Washington Post article notes that there are other reasons for the cabinet secretaries being relatively anonymous. For one, the media doesn't cover them unless they are being appointed or sacked. Two the Bush Administration likes it that way; and thirdly, discipline is absolute. Policy decisions are being made in the White House. Cabinet secretaries do not make policy;

Modern presidents have all run their governments out of the White House. In the past few decades, first-tier Cabinet posts -- State, Defence, Justice and Treasury -- have retained some independent influence, but Cabinet secretaries on the outer rings have often found themselves on the receiving end of marching orders from twenty something White House aides.

Robert B. Reich, President Bill Clinton's Oxford buddy-turned-labour secretary, was so far out of the governing loop that he titled his memoir "Locked in the Cabinet." The White House staff -- once so tiny that President James K. Polk answered his administration's mail when his Cabinet went home for the summer -- became a sprawling army of special assistants, deputy assistants, advisers and analysts who carry out the president's agenda.

Policy decisions that Cabinet secretaries used to make are now hashed out in White House offices.

The other issue that the size of government has increased so drastically that there are numerous executive departments running as anonymous bureaucracies.

I like the idea of elected ministers, but I also like the idea of a completely separate executive. There is no easy solution to this that I know of, consequently, both come with trade offs.

Mid-term elections as a check and balance on the Executive are impossible in Australia due to the Feds and States being Westminster systems. This means the Executive is embedded in the Legislative as the Prime Minister or Premier led Executive Cabinet, not to mention the Executive functions of the Governor-General/Governors and Monarch. Would Australia benefit by having a Presidential system at the federal level? We are certainly mature enough and there have been some Australian governments that could have done with a party-machine based check and balance on their behaviour in parliament.

America was in the grips of civic excitement last night; televisions, websites, phones - all running hot. A friend of mine who runs a prominent political website spent his day watching the loads on the webservers increase as the east coast Americans left work, and the west coast Americans began to start slowing down the workday in the expectation of voting or going home.

Because of the inter-connected nature of the world with the reach of the internet, much of the world got caught up in it too. The Australian blogs being a good example. America watching is not only fun but wise, as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet everyone is always keen to try and predict where the elephant in the room will choose to sit. It makes prudent sense.

The US mid-terms are a function of a Federal Presidential system. Australia does not have anything like it as we are a Federal Parliamentary system. Australia does not separate the executive and legislative branches of government.

In the United States the President is the Executive and is responsible for executing the laws that the Legislative (Congress - Senate and House of Representatives) make. Separating those two branches of government, the third is the judicial, is called >separation of powers .

Australians do not vote directly for the Executive in Australian Government as the Executive position is messy. There are four executive authorities in the Australian Constitution ; the Queen, the Governor-General, the Governor-General in Council and the Federal Executive Council. The constitution delegates the monarch's executive powers to the Governor-General. But the Governor-General is a Jekyll and Hyde constitutional position who can act independently as the Governor-General , or under the Federal Executive Council's advice as the Governor-General in Council .

Consequently, in the Australian Constitution, the Governor-General can dismiss an Executive Council, but the Executive Council can recommend the dismissal of the Governor-General in Council who must take that advice. That is not a check and balance; it is similar to what software developers call a race condition and an indication of poor design.

The Federal Executive Council is drawn from the Legislative body which in Australia is Parliament. The Executive Council can draw its members from the Senate and House of Representatives, totally breaking any form of separation of powers between Executive and Legislative in Australian government between those two branches.

The fear from systems that collapse different branches of government into the same body is that it will produce illiberal and arbitrary outcomes. For instance, dictatorship is a political position that places the executive, legislative and judicial responsibilities into one person. The success of the Westminster system in Britain was to route away the absolute executive power the monarch had in their political system into parliament which slowly became more and more representative and democratic. The innovation of the American system was to make real and functional the complete separation of powers.

However, as we have seen in both systems, party discipline can over-ride structural designs for checks and balances and leave the Executive unencumbered by parliamentary or congressional scrutiny. Both countries saw limited oversight of the Executive's execution of laws while the Australian Parliament and American Congress both used party majorities to ram through legislation without sufficient internal or public reflection.

The US mid-term elections were as much about returning a check and balance to the Washington system of governance as anything else and it is through the design of the system that it is possible. The US house of Representatives comes up for re-election every two years while a third of the US Senate is up for election with each House election. The President's position is every four years. So there is a staggering of the election cycles between the Executive and Legislative.

This means that in the middle of a Presidential term American voters can place a party machine check and balance in the Legislative by having the opportunity to vote for House and Senate elections. Australian voters do not have the same opportunity other than an occasional bi-election to show their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. There have been more than a few Australian Executive Councils who could have done with a re-ordering of Parliament to place a check and balance on their executive behaviour and arrogance but since the Parliament is both Executive and Legislative that is impossible in the Australian system.

Am I arguing for a separate executive and a Presidential system for the Australian Federal government? Yes. The argument against Presidential systems is that they are less stable than Parliamentary ones, this is mainly because the Parliament collapses two branches into one giving the Prime Minister greater power than a President has. Pseudo-tyrants and one-party states can exist in a Parliamentary system, they cannot in a Presidential one.

Australia is a mature nation who has shown a strong commitment to liberal democracy and political stability. Even our most turbulent times such as the dismissal of Jack Lang and Gough Whitlam have been pretty tame by world standards. Through our commitment we have even made the clunky old archaic Westminster operate with some appearance of efficiency while dumping the absolute absurdities present in it. But that doesn't overcome the lack of separation of powers or missing checks and balances inherent in the Westminster system and Constitutional Monarchy.

Australia can easily handle a Presidential system. It is the logical iteration of democratic improvement from a constitutional monarchy that will simplify our constitutional system. Not only that, Australia can improve the constitutional form of a separate executive and bicameral legislative, so the nation after us that chooses a Presidential system will use the Australian Constitution as its template.

x-posted at clubtroppo