How to strengthen the Presidency, and strengthen our Country too...

I, like most in this country, have a problem with the Presidency. Ok, that is mild. I have huge freakin’ problems with THIS Presidency, for oh so many reasons. Yet I still believe not only in this country, but I also believe in "The Presidency" as a powerful part of this democracy.

At the same time I know many republicans that had a huge problem with the Clinton Presidency, though I never really understood why. He grew the economy and seemed very centrist to me.

And I know I had huge problems with the Reagan Presidency.

It got me to thinking. It seems that the Presidency has certain problems and limitations. And with all problems and limitations, we can either look for solutions and improvements, or we can throw up our hands and say , "That’s just the way the system is, can't do anything about it,"

more after the fold....

So what are some of the problems?

1. Basically 50% of the population doesn’t like or agree with any president elected. This can be viewed as the natural outcome of a two party system. But are there ways to at least decrease that number?

2. Any first term president is basically running for his/her* second term the moment he takes office. (*I added her even though this country has yet to elect anybody other than a older white male to president or vice president...perhaps those days are numbered?)

3. The President takes office representing his party instead of representing the American people. He was elected to serve all the people of this country...the young, the old, the left, the right...yet he is in essence the most powerful man of either the democratic or republican party.

Are these situations unchangeable? No. Are they tough to change? Possibly. Have we really looked to make changes? I don’t think so.

These aren’t the only solutions, and maybe not even the right solutions. But I would like to start a discussion with these 2 ½ possibilities.

1. Change the Presidential term. The President is elected to one six-year term. 6 years is plenty of time for the President to make some changes. It is plenty of time to address problems and leave a mark and a legacy. But it eliminates the pandering to get re-elected. It eliminates the fund raising and speech giving and all that crap that takes away from doing the job of running this country (or should I say, helping to run this country as 1/3 of the balance of power).

2. The moment the president is sworn in, his party affiliation is stripped. He is not a republican President; he is not a democrat President. He is President...Period. I know this is largely symbolic, but symbols are important. He is not elected to serve just the 50.2 percent that dragged their butts to the polls and voted for him; he is not elected to serve those 50.2 percent plus the 49.8 percent that dragged their butts to the polls and voted for his rival. He is elected to serve every man, woman and child of the USA. So remove the party and also go one step further: Give him a nice retirement check on the last day and let him know he can’t give political speeches or lobby work or think tank work. He retires. Does some fishing. Joins a book club. Takes up knitting. Builds freakin’ houses for the homeless or works in a lab developing a cure for AIDS....But his political days are over. Harsh? Yes. Needed? Yes.

      2 ½ ) This one is harder as I admit I don’t know the history as well as I should. I am hoping others here can help me on this.  

       The President is elected and the Vice President is elected SEPARATELY. You have the best two people running against each other for the Presidency and you have the next two best people running against each other for the Vice Presidency.

       I believe it use to be this way and was changed in the 1940’s??? If so, why was it changed?

      Why I like this (but put it as a ½ reason as wise people here might tell me a good reason that this sucks) is that currently the Vice President is often chosen not because he would be the best choice to replace the President, but because he brings in votes from the South or the North or the East or whatever. Currently we aren’t electing the best 2 people to run the Executive Branch and solve problems and grow the future for our children; currently we have a system of electing the best "demographic." If we elect them separately then the best vote getter of the whole country wins the Presidency. And the best vote getter for Vice President wins the Vice Presidency (the Edward’s people should love this as can anyone believe that Cheney would have beaten Edwards in votes? Heck, Cheney would never have been picked to even run if he had to rely on people voting for him instead of being on a ticket with someone else.).

      The potential downside: Well you could have a President and Vice President from different parties. I don’t see this by itself as a huge issue. Remember 2 from above...we already removed their political party when they take office. Also remember that both the President and Vice President are elected to serve all the people. Not only would they both be intelligent adults (dreaming again?), but they would be intelligent adults chosen by the people to work together for this country. They would hopefully at least listen to each other, and in a good world they would strengthen each other. The one real downside I see to this is the potential for political assassination. If the Vice President was republican and the President was democrat, or vice versa, and the other party really wanted to be in power (as they are want to do) it could be bad. I mostly have (silly perhaps?) faith that we would avoid that as a country.I also believe that our secret service would be very much on guard if we ever had a President and Vice President from separate parties.

      Mostly election years both the President and Vice President elected would be of the same party. In a democratic leaning year the President and Vice President would probably both be democrat, and vice versa. But in very moderate years, or in years when a complete loon is somehow elected by a party to be president of vice president, well in those years we may have a split executive branch.

      We, as a country would survive that...hell we've survived 7 years of Bush/Cheney...give yourselves a high five...surviving 7 years of this is no easy task and i wouldn't wish it on my enemies. The up side is that, with the people electing both separately, it becomes less an issue that a crazy Vice President sneaks in on the Presidential ticket. Or a poorly qualified person is chosen to run as Vice President purely to fill a demographic need.

      In Short...a single 6 year term, stripping of political party affiliation and possibly going back to having the President and Vice President running on separate tickets.

      Any other thoughts to improve our system??

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