Monday, March 12, 2007

party crashing

Despite my proclivity to occasionally discuss the topic, I really dislike politics.

Or, more specifically, I dislike political parties.

Don't get me wrong; I think the little two-party system we have going on in this country works fine for the most part, especially when the White House and Congress are divided (and thus very little actually gets done). I'm really not a political science type of person, so I don't actually have too much to say about the inner workings of our system. All I really know about is voting, because that's all I really get to do.

When it comes down to voting, I feel like the American public gets a raw deal--not because of the electoral system (I really have no strong feelings there)--but because we don't have enough viable options when it comes to electing a president. There are two main options--the Republican and the Democrat--and a smattering of third-party candidates who would need some sort of direct divine mandate to even be in the consideration. I think that that pretty much sucks; it comes down to two candidates who try as hard as possible to run solely on being the antithesis of each other. Each candidate's position on each of the issues is simply the negation of the other candidate's. So, we're stuck with a "for-or-against" mentality which I feel is incredibly damaging to our leaders' ability to actually lead the country in a meaningful fashion.

In any case, I'm not just going to bitch; I have an idea. It's a pretty simple one, and I haven't really built up a bullet-proof case for it, but here it is: in an election (especially for president), the incumbent (if there is one) should not be allowed to gain his or her party's nomination. The incumbent should run as the incumbent, not as the Democratic or Republican candidate (of course, they can retain their party affiliation; that would be silly to revoke that).

My goal with this is that the party in question would then nominate another candidate for the office as a challenger, bringing the number of viable options up to three (presumably). For instance, let's say that the Democrats decide that Barack Obama is the best candidate for president in 2008, but he doesn't have the necessary experience to win the general election in the current climate and a failed bid would ruin his chances for the future--say, 2012. If they nominate another candidate and that candidate wins, Obama won't even have the chance to run in 2012 because the Democratic support would go to the incumbent (unless he or she does something really, really, really stupid). If the incumbent were off the table, the Dems could nominate him again when he's ready and we'd have three possible candidates.

Anyway, that scenario aside, there's a bunch of positive things I see coming out of this:

  • More voter options - the people get to select the status quo, the opposite philosophy, or the updated version of the philosophy in power.

  • Increased perception of accountability - if the people currently in power know that their own party will be putting up an opposing candidate, they might tend to police themselves a bit more and not be quite so cavalier about making decisions.

  • Increased freedom for dissent - if each party knows that there will be another candidate against the current administration, they may not be quite so scared of going against the policies of those in power

  • More debate on the issues - if each party is forced to go through the primary process at each election, the issues of the day will debated between the parties as well as with the current administration (no more of the current "I just have to out-run you" kind of thing; we would actually get to debate nuances).


..and there's probably more I could come up with if asked, but for now I'm tired of typing out the list. I would say that it will decrease the advantage the incumbent naturally has, but I'm not sure if it would; sometimes it might split the incumbent's votes, but other times it might split the challenger's votes. I don't know.

In any case, I don't think I've ever heard anyone propose this before, so I figured I should get it time-stamped and out on the Internet, just in case. I'd like to explore it a bit more, too, and so other people need to read it so we can discuss.

Although, discussions are better when they involve beer rather than keyboards...