I have a friend who cancelled his landline telephone because the only calls he received were from telemarketers, pollsters, and candidates’ campaigns. I should do the same…
As the pundits on local, state, and national programs analyze and predict the presidential election results, that are still 15 months away, I could save them a lot of time: as voters we aren’t too smart and therefore very unpredictable. Consider the results in Florida from the 2014 election: the Republicans retained control of the house, senate, and the governorship, but we passed a constitutional amendment to set aside monies specifically for conservation of lands. The majority also voted to legalize medicinal marijuana, but didn’t meet the 60% threshold required by Florida’s Constitution. These two ideas are generally associated with the Democratic Party. In other words, the people have shown they want progressive social solutions, but they don’t want to pay for them…
In the USA we claim to be a great democracy (on the Federal level), and look down our noses at single party states like China. If you look closely, however, I believe you will see that we are much closer to China’s model of government than we are of the parliamentary democracies that many other countries follow. We have open debate between progressive ideas and conservative ideas the same way the Chinese do, but they do it in private. Our citizens still retain the highest level of civil rights compared to any other nation, for which I’m very proud and grateful, but we should be careful about throwing stones in a glass house.
The Chinese have a system whereby they pick their leaders through a single party, and members are given increasingly higher level administration position within their party based largely on their merit (and somewhat on their corruption), much like large corporations promote management. The Chinese don’t air their dirty laundry in the press. In our country, we pick our leaders through a supposed two-party system based largely on their ability to raise money, look good on TV, and their loyalty to the party (and somewhat on their corruption). The only real difference is we air our dirty laundry across the TV sets and Internet. That is, we have an open debate about the direction of policies in our country, while the Chinese keep the debate behind closed doors.
In the USA, we are told that “anybody can be president.” If Politifact checked this rating, I believe they would rate it “pants on fire.” If this were true, Ross Perot would have been the Forty-First President of the United States of America. But the reality is, the political machine we have created in this country is much too strong for an outsider to break through for the Office of President. Consider how we select our President. They raise money and try to get on TV, so the TV affiliates get the first shot at narrowing the field. We hold primaries in a few (i.e., less than five) small states that narrow the field to two or three people in each party and then by the time we get to the general election (where we actually vote for the President), we have our choice of two party-candidates and a few inconsequential candidates from fringe parties. In other words, of the nearly 100 candidates for president, less than 10% will you have the opportunity to vote for and only two will have a chance to become President: the Republican and Democratic nominations. If for example, I wanted Bishop Julian Lewis, Jr (I had never heard of him until researching for this post and don’t agree with him on the issues.) for President, the probability that he will be on the ticket is near zero; thus, I won’t have the opportunity to vote for my candidate.
The point to this tirade is that our system for electing the President of the United States of America is outdated and wholly undemocratic. What we should do, is require people to register for the election, further require that they all get equal press time and opportunity to express their views, and then hold an election of all the people voting on the same day. If nobody gains a majority, then hold a second election a few months later where the two top vote-getters are put on a ballot. By holding an election in this fashion, we will move closer to a democracy and move away from the bipolar single-party system we have today.