"Bush campaign ads using team"

[eppie]

And if you have enugh parties, no one can get things done without even more compromise than it takes to get in a bicameral system.

Well that is where I disagree very much. Let me illustrate that by giving some advantages and disadvantages of these systems.
The twoparty-system (like in the US) means (or turns out to be) that if you are a small party, now way will you be elected, or even take part in presedential elections because you don't have a chance. Even when there are 10 milion people who vote for you. (I now there is also soemthing as a parliament but when it is always just about Bush vs. Kerry noboby bothers to check things out for himself. So in principle you can start your own party but unless you are able to get milions and milions of dollars campaign money, just forget it.

So what than the problem is there are all these people with, acoording to what people say here, very different opinions on different subject but still they "have" to vote for one of these parties. So then it might be al very easy "to get things done" but it can very well be that half of Bush voters don't agree with his environmental policy, but he can still take the decissions.

That's is why a multi-party system is very good. Okay thre are more parties and almost always coalitions have to be formed, but the chance that decissions are made with support of most of the people is a lot bigger. If one of the parties in the government sees that there are several small parties that have a certain opinion on let's say teh environment they have to take that into account. There can be a majority government based on its economic plans, still its plans about the environment can still be influenced a lot by the smaller parties.

Another example, we have now "the party for the animals" which standmainly for better animal rights. Of course such a party should never be big because it is too much focussed on one subject. The chance is quite high that they will get 1 or 2 seats (of 150) in the parliament next elections. What this shows is that there are apparently so many people that are really so angry about animal treatment that they are willing to vote for such a party (and they are not just some treehuggers, but a lot of inteligent and repectable citizens). So this gives a signal to other bigger parties that animal rights are an important topic for the people. Because here, just like in the US, the election debates are often based around two or three important issues, like economics, asylum-seekers etc.. Result: the following elections the party of the animals will be gone again, because the bigger parties changed their attitude on animal rights....so democracy worked!
This multi party system has a much bigger capacity for correcting politicians. And teh making of decissions doesn't go so much slower. Our government also "just went to Iraq" while they knew that most people were against that, they made that decission fairly quick.