They’re trying too hard down in California, for my money, to yuck it up about the governor-recall vote and Arnold Swarzenegger’s run. You know: Well, Aaron, heh, heh, at least it will be entertaining. I think I hear a note of despair amid the flippancy.

What do you have politically in the U.S. today? A country that officially claims to be the leader, or even inventor of modern democracy, and plans not just to teach it but impose it in the rest of the world. Yet the Americans barely get 50 per cent out to vote, this President lost the election he won, there’s scarcely a sign of debate (they can’t get national health care, taken for granted everywhere else, on the agenda), and money equals winning. They sob through their guffaws.

I am an Ah-nold fan, I rush to add, ever since a friend made me go to Total Recall and told me to watch not the screen, but the audience: full of guys like Arnold would once have been — geeky, funny name, talks funny, got pushed around on the beach by bullies like a weakling in the comic book ads, till he took a muscle-building course, and thrilled the girls. The essence of Arnold, she explained, is that he blows away his tormentors, a high-potency upgrade of that scene in the sand.

Arnold himself, though, is just another actor who is not what he plays.

Some actors can play brave or deep, brilliantly, but are not that way at all. It’s called acting. If Arnold was what he plays, then at the press briefing for his “California economic summit” this week, he’d have turned to Warren Buffett on one side and George Shultz on the other, and blown them away. Don’t get me started: John Malkovich, who seems so smart onscreen, so outside the Hollywood box, announced after 9/11 that he wanted to kill journalist Robert Fisk, who had been showing a lack of deference to the U.S.

Anyway, direct political forms such as recalls and referendums often get derided by pros like pundits, profs and politicians. It’s not surprising.

If people could make hard decisions on their own, who would need elected reps and experts?

From Britain, where a referendum on Europe looms, politics prof David Runciman writes that referendums have no connection to democracy. He says classical Greek democracy was marked “above all by the practice of election by lot.”

In fact, I’d say Greek democracy was marked not by elections at all but by intense debate among citizens until agreement emerged, so that it didn’t matter much which officials were chosen to carry out the consensus. (A great idea for Canadian Senate reform, by the way, would be selection by lot; it works with juries.)

Former Globe editor William Thorsell once told me that, if we had real democracy, we would have capital punishment. He based that on opinion polls. But a lot would depend on the level and amount of discussion before a final vote. If people knew their opinions would count as law, I believe we would see a serious debate emerge, with minds changing.

In this respect, we have an example to offer the world: the Charlottetown constitutional referendum of 1993, when a thoughtful majority took the time to inform themselves, changed their minds during the campaign, and rejected the unified opinion of the elites. Prof. Runciman in the United Kingdom says he would prefer electing representatives to a constitutional convention on Europe because those chosen “would at least have to read the damn thing.” But in Canada in ’93, people in buses and shops did read and discuss the damn thing. Then they voted.

Or take same-sex marriage. Everybody mouths off and when you take a poll, opinion is split.

But if we had a binding national vote, people would get more serious. The big debate would not be between gays and straights but between parents and their kids, who would demand that their folks explain why they find this so horrifying.

What about a referendum on public versus privatized energy? Its purpose would not be to just let people vent their prejudices but to deepen and refine their ideas. (Do you really value “consumer choice” about which electrons come through your wall the same way you do when you’re shopping for a car? That’s the kind of question that would arise.) I’m not opposed to the representative parliamentary system we now have, but it does seem to be the best kind of democracy except for all the others.

Just moving to proportional representation would be big progress. (The last time Ontario had a majority government actually elected by a majority of voters was 1929-1934.) I’m not even giving up on the California recall.

The latest poll showed Arnold falling behind roly-poly Lieutenant-Governor Cruz Bustamante. Surely you remember his last action blockbuster.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.