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After we took Baghdad, there was a lot of discussion about what kind of government we should establish. As you know by now, we gave the Iraqis a Parliamentary constitution. At that time, I joined the debate, arguing for another kind of constitution - one more like ours. Here is what I wrote then. Judge for yourself whether or not I was right.

We are about to establish a government for a liberated Iraq. What type of government will this be?

To answer that it is necessary first to ask a question about our own political system. How does the United States government structure differ from nearly all other democracies on this planet?

The answer may come as a surprise: To call America a democracy is a misuse of that term. America actually is a representative Republic. Most other self-governing nations are representative democracies.

Interestingly, of those few nations that have adopted the American model, most have evolved into a dictatorship of one kind or another. Why is this, and why have we evolved into the longest-lived (excepting the Isle of Man and possibly Switzerland), most powerful self-governed nation in history?

The simple answer to why seems to be that from the beginning, we agreed to observe the rule of law as it has evolved in the West. We set up checks and balances across our government structure that, along with our accepting the supremacy of our laws, kept any one person or group from exercising excessive control over government. We also made a strong point of pushing government to the lowest possible level, and always presuming that any power the people granted to government really did emanate from the people, and that powers not specifically granted to government automatically resided directly with the people.

These concepts appear simple to state, but have had profound influence in shaping our nation over the past two centuries.

The parliamentary system practiced by most other democracies is dramatically different from how we govern ourselves. Our system devolves down to the votes of individual citizens. Sure we have political parties, and ultimate control of our upper and lower chambers at any given time rests with the party in power in that chamber. But the Executive Branch is entirely separate, and thus relatively independent.

In the parliamentary system, citizens vote for party members who, in turn, vote for the head of government. While it is much less likely that this form of government can evolve into a dictatorship, governance is controlled by

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