Of Parliaments and Hobbits

I’ve been in New Zealand for two weeks this time out, in that weird in-between space where you’re outside the U.S. and yet still feeling attached — looking in as an alien at both your own society and the one you’re visiting. So, for example, I get the PBS NewsHour here, but I’m also watching parliamentary election debates among the “minor party” candidates. New Zealand’s electoral system is currently based on MMP, which stands for Mixed Member Proportional representation. MMP is a “multi-vote” system that separately elects both individual candidates and party representatives and actually gives third, fourth, and fifth parties a role in government. (A confession: I tried to write about MMP and found myself desperately confused and needing a glass of wine — so you’re getting this column instead.)

Some snippets of the strangeness that comes from being in-between:

The two major political parties here, National (read: Republican) and Labour (read: Democrat), are eerily similarly to our two major parties, with the former wanting to downsize government in favor of free markets and the latter wanting more borrowing to stimulate the economy. The miraculous difference is that both parties embrace limited socialism as a norm and a necessity. By which I mean that no one here is arguing about government control of health care because single-payer health care is a given. Access to affordable treatment is considered a fundamental human right.