Should we look into a new way of selecting our candidates ??
We've gone from state legislatures selecting our senators until 1913, then we went to smoke filled backroom party decisions, to the public caucus method we see in Iowa, to the closed primary system and then to the open primary system. Each procedure opened it up to more outsiders and more to the people.
What are the results of each of these changes ?
The caliber of the end product has not appreciably changed under any of those methods, when you compare Senators over the years of this Republic.
Nor if you compare Presidents over the years of this republic. Look at the methods. At one time it was the House of Representatives who decided. Then it was the electors in the electoral college who decided, and who were not beholding to any guidelines but their own wishes. Now we still have the electoral college and most states require or penalize in some way those electors who do not follow the popular vote. Has the caliber of the Presidents changed over these different methods ?
I don't think so.
We've managed to open the process to more and more outsider public participation with no appreciable change in the caliber of results.
We're tinkering alot with changing from Winner-Take-All to proportional.
Will this get us better people ? Probably not. You'll get bickering non-majority coalition governments that you see in most parliamentary systems. Often no simple majority gets obtained. This has pros and cons. Is there ever such a thing as a real majority in democracy ? And, another thought: not having a simple majority creates great pressure for all sorts of good and bad compromises making the public suspicious and making the public feel their vote was betrayed and that they have no representation.
As an aside I still like the electoral college as a failsafe valve. Democracy's random populist instinct has elected a Hitler or Hamas or a Hugo Chevez and perhaps an electoral college might show some independence from the popular wave of faddish sentiment. To me, the electoral college is just another check and balance on the tyranny of the majority. And if you look closely at the common denominator of the whole constitution, it appears to be just one long, very long distrust of the tyranny of the majority, from the Bill of Rights, to the 3 branches checking each other, to the populist house vs the patrician slow-it-down Senate, to the concept of separation of powers, to the concept of Federalism whereby States have powers to check the federal government.
What method would be better than the one now ?
I fear the nuts and bolts of designing one will bog one down in endless debate. It's a black hole of endlessness.
So let's start anyway. It's a good exercise.
I'd start with the tax code. Seems unrelated. But relieving any politician from the pressure of promising favoritism in the tax code would be a good start. Outlaw the loopholes. No longer use the tax code to favor certain kinds of economic activity, such as stem cell research, green projects or even some corporation's pet projects. No one gets favored. Even if it's for a good cause. Open it up to one and you've reopened the pandora's box of pressuring each mortal politician.
I'd do what McCain, Bush, Boehner are pushing on the spending side. STOP the earmarks. Stop the Christmas tree bills of appending unrelated items to the main part of a bill. Also stop the process of tagging unrelated items to the bill AFTER the vote. The President finally wised up to that and his executive order states no money will be spent for any of those earmarks tacked on to a bill after a vote. If it was not discussed, debated or voted on, then none of the money allocated for that pork project will be spent. It will be held in escrow.
Also this will change the nature of campaigning. Often a politician will say his opponent voted against this or that bill. But this is misleading, because his opponent might have liked the main part of the bill but was against the unrelated tacked on items. Or his opponent voted for the bill but did not know of the items that were tacked on to it AFTER the bill passed.
How does this change our selection process ?
It does it through the backdoor way. It will force all politicians to comply. It won't change their base motives. But they will have to abide by the rules of a much better system of governing and managing our country.
This backdoor way of making the system better and thus our employees better is my suggestion. I've often seen a bad system make the best employees go shoddy, and a good system make the worst people in to exemplary employees.
I'd say we need system changes and that they are more powerful than the front door way of selection changes.
THEN FINALLY, there's one more thing to consider.
APPROVAL VOTING.
Instead of thinking you'll waste a vote on a non-electable favorite of yours, you can pick several candidates in order of preference.
Instead of a plurality where the winner actually garners less than the other candidates combined, we might find a closer approximation to an actual majority winner more reflective of the depth of support in the electorate.
We've gone from state legislatures selecting our senators until 1913, then we went to smoke filled backroom party decisions, to the public caucus method we see in Iowa, to the closed primary system and then to the open primary system. Each procedure opened it up to more outsiders and more to the people.
What are the results of each of these changes ?
The caliber of the end product has not appreciably changed under any of those methods, when you compare Senators over the years of this Republic.
Nor if you compare Presidents over the years of this republic. Look at the methods. At one time it was the House of Representatives who decided. Then it was the electors in the electoral college who decided, and who were not beholding to any guidelines but their own wishes. Now we still have the electoral college and most states require or penalize in some way those electors who do not follow the popular vote. Has the caliber of the Presidents changed over these different methods ?
I don't think so.
We've managed to open the process to more and more outsider public participation with no appreciable change in the caliber of results.
We're tinkering alot with changing from Winner-Take-All to proportional.
Will this get us better people ? Probably not. You'll get bickering non-majority coalition governments that you see in most parliamentary systems. Often no simple majority gets obtained. This has pros and cons. Is there ever such a thing as a real majority in democracy ? And, another thought: not having a simple majority creates great pressure for all sorts of good and bad compromises making the public suspicious and making the public feel their vote was betrayed and that they have no representation.
As an aside I still like the electoral college as a failsafe valve. Democracy's random populist instinct has elected a Hitler or Hamas or a Hugo Chevez and perhaps an electoral college might show some independence from the popular wave of faddish sentiment. To me, the electoral college is just another check and balance on the tyranny of the majority. And if you look closely at the common denominator of the whole constitution, it appears to be just one long, very long distrust of the tyranny of the majority, from the Bill of Rights, to the 3 branches checking each other, to the populist house vs the patrician slow-it-down Senate, to the concept of separation of powers, to the concept of Federalism whereby States have powers to check the federal government.
What method would be better than the one now ?
I fear the nuts and bolts of designing one will bog one down in endless debate. It's a black hole of endlessness.
So let's start anyway. It's a good exercise.
I'd start with the tax code. Seems unrelated. But relieving any politician from the pressure of promising favoritism in the tax code would be a good start. Outlaw the loopholes. No longer use the tax code to favor certain kinds of economic activity, such as stem cell research, green projects or even some corporation's pet projects. No one gets favored. Even if it's for a good cause. Open it up to one and you've reopened the pandora's box of pressuring each mortal politician.
I'd do what McCain, Bush, Boehner are pushing on the spending side. STOP the earmarks. Stop the Christmas tree bills of appending unrelated items to the main part of a bill. Also stop the process of tagging unrelated items to the bill AFTER the vote. The President finally wised up to that and his executive order states no money will be spent for any of those earmarks tacked on to a bill after a vote. If it was not discussed, debated or voted on, then none of the money allocated for that pork project will be spent. It will be held in escrow.
Also this will change the nature of campaigning. Often a politician will say his opponent voted against this or that bill. But this is misleading, because his opponent might have liked the main part of the bill but was against the unrelated tacked on items. Or his opponent voted for the bill but did not know of the items that were tacked on to it AFTER the bill passed.
How does this change our selection process ?
It does it through the backdoor way. It will force all politicians to comply. It won't change their base motives. But they will have to abide by the rules of a much better system of governing and managing our country.
This backdoor way of making the system better and thus our employees better is my suggestion. I've often seen a bad system make the best employees go shoddy, and a good system make the worst people in to exemplary employees.
I'd say we need system changes and that they are more powerful than the front door way of selection changes.
THEN FINALLY, there's one more thing to consider.
APPROVAL VOTING.
Instead of thinking you'll waste a vote on a non-electable favorite of yours, you can pick several candidates in order of preference.
Instead of a plurality where the winner actually garners less than the other candidates combined, we might find a closer approximation to an actual majority winner more reflective of the depth of support in the electorate.