Today as world governments clashing violently and peacefully, internally and externally, three countries highlight the internal struggle: Great Britain, France, and United States.
The relationship between the current U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama appears to be permanently fried. The battle lines were drawn months, perhaps even years, ago, but the political battle turned particularly ugly this week.
47 Republicans openly told Iranian leaders that any treaty made with the current administration could be challenged by the next U.S. president and by Congress.
Obama and other Democrats “accused Republicans of undermining the president’s authority to carry out foreign policy,” according to The Hill.
“…They [Republicans] have decided that as long as he [Obama] holds the office of the presidency, it’s no longer necessary to respect the office itself,” wrote Paul Waldman on the Plum Line, a Washington Post blog.
Consensus building seems completely impossible at this point.
In France, the rift between President François Hollande and the Socialist Party has widened drastically with the introduction of new economic policy called Macron Law.
“Opposition from the president’s own party was so fierce that Mr. Hollande invoked special constitutional powers to bypass the National Assembly, the first use of that maneuver in nearly a decade,” wrote the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron, a French Economy Minister and the designer of Macron Law, is calling for the French and German governments to, essentially, collaborate and produce similar economic policies, according to the Wall Street Journal. If Mr. Hollande continues down the path that Mr. Macron suggests, can the president hope to reconcile the Socialist Party to the new economic scene?
The recent failed no-confidence vote should not exactly reassure Mr. Hollande, as “it underscored the divisions laid bare by the French President’s decision to shed the consensus-building style that swept him into office,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
It’s a different story on the other side of the channel as Britain gears up for a parliamentary vote in May.
As the minority parties grow in popularity, polls show support for the Green party rose from 1% to 8%, the parties demonstrate a willingness to work together that is unseen in the aforementioned administrations.
“We [the Green, UK Independence, Separatists Scottish National and Liberal-Democrat parties] prefer a so-called confidence and supply arrangement, whereby we would give support to whoever was on number ten on certain big issues, including the budget, in return for getting some of our key priorities brought in and for being able to vote freely on a whole range of other issues,” Rupert Read, a Green party candidate, told The Economist.
Ask yourselves, as I hope the U.S. and French governments have asked themselves, how dangerous is it to present a fractured government to the world? Is their position really so important that it cannot be partially sacrificed for the sake of a united front?
