Its pretty close to objectively clear that, unless something significant changes, our viable options for president will both be very weak.
The vast majority of Americans believe both likely candidates are poor choices and express that they would like better choices...
What is it about our system that produces this effect? Why wouldn't we get better choices and what systemic changes can/should we make to get better presidential and other political choices?
To me a huge part of the problem is cultural idea that these choices are binary. There are in fact a huge number of passable condonations of issue stances and ideologies that we could present and have a robust debate over, but somehow we are stuck in this binary choice where almost always certain issues must be packaged with other only tangentially related issues.
Does Pro-LIfe always have to travel with lower taxes? These two ideas are not very well connected, but they seem to ALWAYS travel together. One could argue that the party that wants less government would want lower taxes and LESS regulation over abortion. Why does prayer in school run with less funding for education?
I can make an argument both ways why these issues are/are not naturally bundled together, so why are they so tightly bound? Is it marketing?
What can we do to create more options and a better mix of positions.
I believe our DEMOCRACY would be stronger if we could break this system of binary choices and get a better mix of issue bundling and more than two sides of every issue represented.
The European Parliamentary system seems to be one option, where after an election several parties often have to build a power sharing coalition and build a government. Any thoughts on this or other ideas?
The vast majority of Americans believe both likely candidates are poor choices and express that they would like better choices...
What is it about our system that produces this effect? Why wouldn't we get better choices and what systemic changes can/should we make to get better presidential and other political choices?
To me a huge part of the problem is cultural idea that these choices are binary. There are in fact a huge number of passable condonations of issue stances and ideologies that we could present and have a robust debate over, but somehow we are stuck in this binary choice where almost always certain issues must be packaged with other only tangentially related issues.
Does Pro-LIfe always have to travel with lower taxes? These two ideas are not very well connected, but they seem to ALWAYS travel together. One could argue that the party that wants less government would want lower taxes and LESS regulation over abortion. Why does prayer in school run with less funding for education?
I can make an argument both ways why these issues are/are not naturally bundled together, so why are they so tightly bound? Is it marketing?
What can we do to create more options and a better mix of positions.
I believe our DEMOCRACY would be stronger if we could break this system of binary choices and get a better mix of issue bundling and more than two sides of every issue represented.
The European Parliamentary system seems to be one option, where after an election several parties often have to build a power sharing coalition and build a government. Any thoughts on this or other ideas?