Some ideas: -Gotta get the river of quiet money out of partisan politics. -Get rid of “superdelegates” -Make it less difficult to hold corrupt politicians to account. -Term limits and mandatory retirement ages for all government officials. -Clean up gerrymandering. -**More voter involvement in the electoral process.
As for the Presidency, I would not want the job. I enjoy my life as it is now.
I agree with all your suggestions, especially the quiet (which is no longer so quiet) money out of it. Each candidate for office should get the same amount of money and they can spend it on their campaigns in whatever way they choose. That would eliminate getting the best candidates money can buy.
Another change would be to preclude any candidate, irrespective of how much time they served, from lobbying. In fact, maybe we should eliminate lobbying completely.
Also, end lifetime pensions and healthcare no matter how long a politician serves, and only presidents and their immediate minor children get secret Service protection. When the children reach 21 or 25, that stops.
I'm on the fence about mandatory retirement ages. There are 70-year olds who are more competent than some 40-year olds. That would have to be on a case-by-case basis.
Slightly off topic, I don't think appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States should be lifetime.
I like your suggestions, and how the idea of putting limits on the generous lifetime benefits would also save a ton of money.
If a mandatory age of retirement can be imposed on the little-guy non-official gov’t jobs, it seems to me only just that it applies to the big-boy jobs too, and for the same reasons.
Yes, we agree on the Supreme Court, in fact, I mentioned it in another post about term limits today.
I think if they were to limit the generous lifetime benefits and impose term limits, there might be candidates that run to actually further the interests of their constituents and the country rather than line their own pockets and give them access to other politicians for purposes of lobbying. Remove the greed factor and perhaps it would be replaced with altruism.
True meritocrazy is always a good idea, but somehow it never get implemented.
Or rather, whenever it gets implemented it instantly turn into something else and much less desirable. an elitocracy. Such tend to get oppressive quite quickly. But after a while they do get overthrown and democracy get re-introduced.
It's impossible to implement a meritocracy. To do so, you would first need some system in place to judge merit. And it is human nature that the very people who create said system would view themselves as having high merit. So the system has a major flaw before it's even implemented.
For the most part, I believe politics reflects society. We act like politicians are to blame for everything that's wrong, but we donate to these people, we vote for them, we enable them. We have to have higher standards if we expect better people to run and win.
I agree that leadership is a reflection of the society being led. It's difficult to get better people to run in a society that seems to have a serious form of self hatred as well as an intense loathing of opposition to political correctness. We hold elections and work to overturn them. John Adams was right when he said that the people are a mob. He oughta see it now.
There's no way to completely fix it. Any political system is inherently broken, because they all rely on having some people with more power than everyone else.
The best we can do, is hold the leadership accountable. The best way to do that, is not to send them hundreds or thousands of miles away from their constituents ... where they are largely inaccessible.
So I vote we dissolve Washington DC. Turn the land back over to Maryland. Send Congresspeople back to their home states. (they can meet via Skype or whatever technology)
Strengthen the power of the People, and weaken the power of lobbyists.
Would you ask this question if the candidate for whom you voted had been elected? And why do "we" need to fix the system if everyone doesn't agree that it needs fixing?
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at September 1, 2018 7:28 PM MDT
And considering that the USA is a constitutional republic, to which democracy does your answer refer?
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at September 4, 2018 6:12 AM MDT
Good answer. It's rare to see someone that recognizes the fact that the United States is a constitutional republic and isn't afraid to say so. Informed answers are always a pleasure to see. :)
It isn't going to happen, the politicians are chosen way before election by a corporate elite, Clinton was chosen 10 years prior, and you have to be in a "special secret club."
They could be required to take a coloring test - Trump would of failed and not floated to the top. Cheers!
This post was edited by Nanoose at August 30, 2018 4:39 PM MDT
~ 
Don Barzini 