Blair, like him or not, faces significant opposition in his Cabinet and Caucus, not to mention in the remainder of the EU. But at least he has the presence of mind to be able to articulate his views, however unpopular.

In any event, I’m not certain that the lack of debating societies in the US is as important a factor as the simple structural fact that we don’t have a parliamentary system, where the Executive is intrinsically connected to the Legislative and cannot get away with hiding in his office, or speaking only in carefully scripted and controlled circumstances.

But in Bush’s case, the structural aspects which encourage the Cloistered Presidency is combined with a personal lack of ability to think clearly and express those thoughts effectively which is astounding in a public figure in high office. I watched tonight Colin Powell testifying before a Senate committee and the same kind of thought occured to me about his peformance: “Bush could never do that.”

On the other hand, Bill Clinton—who also took advantage, during the time he was under attack from the right, of the possibility of removing himself from unfiltered public questioning, has demonstrated a fairly amazing ability to speak off the cuff about complex subjects, in complete sentences and paragraphs, no less. Unlike Bush, he would have done well in the British system.

(I suppose that fact that he was a debater while at Oxford might have something to do with that.)

That being said, true skeptical questioning of members of both parties is rare in this country (even on the Sunday morning shows); more often than not, politicians stick to their talking points and leave, then the partisan hacks deconstruct the statements in a round table format afterwards.

(Of course, it’s easy to take cheap shots at Bush’s nervousness in off-the-cuff public speaking, but I don’t recall a lot of insightful and adversarial interviews with Clinton either.)

What’s also worth mentioning is the number of MPs who trace their professional backgrounds through two other environments where one has to hold one’s own as a speaker: either through trades union activism, or from training for the Bar. If you’ve had to face up to Justice Cocklecarrot as a trainee barrister, then you can certainly cope with Paxo.

I was also deeply saddened because there is no chance at all that any American politician of stature, let alone Bush, would dare submit to such an interview. Nor, as was pointed out, is there anyone on American TV capable of leading such an interview.

As for Clinton, it’s true there were few adversary interviews that were intentionally public. But considering that there was a well-funded media effort to discredit him in every possible way (who killed vince foster and the like), it would be a mistake to compare the Clinton situation with Bush. In the former, the dissent was irresponsible, but it wasn’t suppressed. In the latter, there are active attempts to shut people up, no matter how mild the objection to Bush policies, as per the odious O’Reilly, merely the most egregious example of the past 3 days.

unfutz: Yes, you’re right—- there’s quite a tight link between those two institutions, of course. The college societies are modeled on the parliament, so that sort of arguing is a standard way to do thing. Nick Sweeney is right, too, that the Union activism and the law are the other main routes. Both involve having to speak up in front of people who aren’t afraid to talk back.

Jeff: Abslutely, there are some excellent parliamentary debaters in the U.S. I knew some of them while I was at Princeton. It is more of a fringe activity, though, more disconnected from politics. And the best of them have to adapt themselves to the parliamentary style when they go into international competitions.

D-planfan: Yeah, that’s me in 1993. So maybe I’m biased about this :) It does you Trinity jackeens good to have to suffer at the hands of the culchies every now and again.