Barack Obama wanted three attributes of Australia for America. Credit:AP "It was the beginning of this notion of liberty and being able to defend ourselves. We will never be able to do what Australia did, it's too deep, too profound." Yet it's not true that this history has always precluded controls. The US has imposed constraints. In 1934 the Congress passed the National Firearms Act, banning machineguns and silencers, for instance. And in 1994, after a series of mass shootings, the Congress imposed a 10-year ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. There's an impression today that only Democrats favour gun controls. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was the president who signed that ban into law. But it's a false impression. Among the ban's supporters was Ronald Reagan, the greatest Republican hero of the last half-century. Obama tried to reinstate the ban on assault weapons after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of the innocents. Twenty first-grade children and six adults in Connecticut were murdered by a 20-year-old without any established motive. He killed them with a semi-automatic rifle. He was legally entitled to the weapon. It was 2012; the Clinton ban had expired eight years earlier.

Obama didn't try to tell Americans that they should ban guns, only assault weapons. He also proposed to make background checks for prospective gun buyers more rigorous. "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?" Obama posed."Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?" Yes, came the answer from the US Congress. Obama's efforts failed. In fact, during his eight years in office, gun regulation overall was not tightened but relaxed. How can it be? The reflex answer is to blame the notoriously effective lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA). But Thomas Mann, a politics scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the first part of the answer is the structure of the American system. "The electoral college system" – by which the president is elected – "advantages small states and non-metropolitan areas, while support for gun control is mostly in the cities," he explains. "Then the smaller states are also advantaged in the Senate, as well. It makes it exceedingly difficult." One result: when the US Senate voted on Obama's proposal for tougher background checks on gun buyers, it was defeated by senators representing just 37 per cent of the population. The structural imbalance built into the system meant that 37 could beat 63.

"As long as the Republicans control the White House, or either of the houses of Congress, they have a veto point" to prevent any reform, says Mann. "And now they control everything" – the White House as well as both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This system, a presidential form of government, was designed by people with little trust in government, a rebellious republic. The legislature and the presidency have the power of veto over each other. The Westminster system that Australia took from Britain is much more trusting, where the House, at least, is axiomatically under the control of the prime minister. And then there's the NRA. The system rewards lobbies or interest groups that combine three elements, says Mann – intensity, organisation, and money. The NRA has all three. Before running for the presidency, Donald Trump supported tougher regulation of guns. But after the NRA gave $US30 million to his campaign, presidential candidate Trump told an NRA convention: "You came through big for me, and I am going to come through for you." So the NRA has made a tactical concession in response to the Las Vegas massacre. It conceded that there may be a case for putting some regulations on the gun accessory – the bump stock – that allowed the butcher Paddock to turn his legal semi-automatic rifle into a fully automatic one, creating a non-stop stream of fire.

Not banned, mind you. The NRA statement says "additional regulations" should apply. But that tactical concession does not mark any change in strategy or direction. In the very same statement, the gun lobby called on the Congress to pass the so-called "National Right-to-Carry reciprocity" measure now before it. Decoded, this proposal would mean that Texas residents, for instance, who can legally and openly carry guns in public in their home state, could travel to states where this would be illegal, say California, and be allowed to carry their firearms regardless of Californian law. Make no mistake, the NRA is charging ahead towards its ultimate aim of America as a libertarian fantasy free-fire zone. The guns example is a case study in what the American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama has categorised "vetocracy". That is, the US system is not a democracy dominated by the "demos", the Greek word for people. In a vetocracy, it is the veto that is all-powerful. Americans prefer "constraint of authority" over "effective government", Fukuyama said. One of Fukuyama's favourite examples is the US federal budget. The Congress hasn't passed a normal budget in the traditional way for a decade, with Congress constantly threatening to "shut down the government" by denying it funding authority.

On another Australian achievement that Obama wanted for America, universal healthcare, he and his party made a huge effort. And while he didn't get everything he wanted through the "vetocracy", he did get some. Obamacare, as its known, is an ugly hybrid of the old American health system of survival of the fittest with some elements of universal care. It approximately doubled the percentage of Americans with health insurance. But it still leaves about 10 per cent, between 20 million and 30 million people, with none. And the program's future is uncertain. The Republican Party promises to abolish Obamacare. And on Obama's third Australianism, compulsory voting, he decided that this was just too hard to attempt, an impossible dream. So is America's "vetocracy" a terrible failing that allows organised minorities to defy the majority's will and block national progress? Looking at the Obama experience from an Australian viewpoint, you'd probably say yes. But now look at the American system under President Trump. He took office promising to impose many radical policies and disregarding conventional processes. Panic welled – he would be an American fascist, a dictator who would trash the independent institutions and smash American democracy.

But, so far at least, the opposite is true. After nine months, Trump is proving to be remarkably ineffectual. He promised to build a wall across the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. But the US Congress has refused to allocate any funds for it and Mexico is certainly not offering. Trump signed executive orders banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, but has been repeatedly frustrated by the courts. He vowed to improve relations with Moscow and lift sanctions on Russia, but dropped the idea in the face of fierce Congressional opposition. He has sought to fulfil his pledge to repeal Obamacare but has twice failed to win enough support in the legislature. Trump signed an order to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord but discovered that he cannot and must wait years to even begin the process; his authority is insufficient to override US treaty obligations. Trump promised to impose punitive 40 per cent tariffs on all Chinese imports and declare China a currency manipulator, but the weight of US commerce and the reality of Chinese power has stayed his hand. Trump asked the Congress to cut medical research funding to the National Institutes of Health by $US7.5 billion. Instead, the Congress did the opposite and increased funding by $US2 billion.

This week he called for a Congressional inquiry into "fake news" outlet NBC, but, as Thomas Mann points out, "it's not going to happen, it would violate the First Amendment" right to free speech. Rather than rule with an iron fist, Trump is tweeting with frustrated fingers. He may be making waves on social media but barely a ripple of change in the real world. Mann, while deeply worried about the future under Trump, notes that his top national security aides are limiting him and the courts and Congress are blocking him – "there are constraints operating, legislating is really hard". The media is not relenting in its scrutiny of Trump and neither is the former FBI chief Robert Mueller, appointed special counsel to investigate claims of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. The vetocracy, which worked to frustrate Obama, is now working to constrain Trump. Same system, different president, and suddenly it doesn't seem to be such a terrible thing, does it? In the meantime, Obama's Australian aspirations live on in the minds of the next generation. His other ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, is now running to be elected lieutenant governor, or deputy leader, of California, America's biggest state economy.

"Two things I've been talking about in California," Bleich says, "are the Australian model of reducing mass shootings and the value of universal voting to take extremism out of politics." California carries weight and can lead markets, Bleich points out. Is change in the American vetocracy permanently impossible, or is it a matter of timing and leadership? And how do you sort the bad changes from the good? Democracy has never promised ideal outcomes. Its strength is to allow the bloodless removal of bad leaders, as the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper pointed out. And that's part of the 80 per cent. Peter Hartcher is political editor.