That's the thing about a parliamentary structure ... you get the temporary dictatorship. So the people must occasionally flip their flop and vote in the opposite number, to keep things on an even keel. Here we keep things on an even keel by splitting the houses of government, and having a democratic congress and a republican president, or vice versa. This of course is the real meaning behind the 1994 republican "landslide" -- the people realized, to their horror, that they had the same party in both the executive and legislative branch, and rushed to correct the imbalance.

Alex