You have the perceived the problem, but from the wrong perspective. You think we need to teach an old dog new tricks. Instead, we need to move to another dog park entirely.
Think hard about why a liberal democracy is the most successful form of government found thus far. Is it because it picks a lot of great leaders? No, as you lay out, as it does not. What democracy does is allow us to *get rid of the worst leaders quickly and with little fuss*. That is the key beneficial feature of democracy.
After one realizes that, one sees that that benefit is why we tolerate a rotating cast of poor leaders, because we haven't found a way, but one also comes to the natural conclusion that the way to pick better leaders is NOT to keep picking them the same way.
It is also NOT "more democracy". We are in the pickle we're in in the US because of a few things, social media and globalization forces perhaps paramount among them, but one underappreciated facet is that in the US, parties have caved to the desire for "more democracy". I would make the case that "less democracy" in the party nomination setting served the country excellently for a very long time. The people don't do a great job of picking leaders alone, and having multiple filters helps. We used to have a party filter (pay your dues coming up) a media filter (they could find big problems and essentially tank a candidate, most often fairly though sometimes not), and the people voting. Now... we have the people voting.
The parties willingly ceded control of their party apparatus in the name of "more democracy" by opening up primaries, and yet they wonder why they need to sit around trying every trick in the book to get rid of someone who.... wasn't IN their party until he ran and wasn't eligible to run for office in their party at all by the old rules. They play a last minute superdelegate game and tank another candidate in favor of the party apparatus favorite, rather than just saying "you're an independent and thus not eligible" to the challenger in the first place. Lots of stupid games, and all introduced by simply opening up primaries. I would argue that this is one of the massive problems we have introduced. We open up primaries, we get the candidate who would get the wing 26% on either side, and then those two face off against one another.
Looked at another way, having an elite/party filter PLUS the vote of the people filter was a decent way to pick candidates, and having no selection process other than the people is very, very bad.
But overall, we simply need a new way to pick candidates. No one of the candidate type you seek will run, because of the way politics works. Politics is such a diry game and when you enter it you piss off 49% of the population no matter what. Plus the media lays into you and embarasses your family. Who wants that job? It turns out, mostly the people whose egos are so large that they outweigh those negatives, the people that dream of being president from elementary school onward. There are some people who do it to benefit others and society, I grant that. But they are not the norm.
So what is the answer? Not sure, but it ain't "teach politicians to be better". It's somewhere between change the system moderately favorably and "make everyone vote for a college of 435 people who then go in a room and debate picking 25 indivduals to become a committee who search for candidates and then come up with a short list of 5, then the 435 pick one of those for president. The president is never seen in public but can be fired on short notice, but rather remains entirely anonymous. the president is motivated to good action by the fact that after their term the people will vote them a financial reward based on how well they did, again anonymously."
That's out there, but it's closer to what would actually be successful then full democracy leading to modern social-media-driven demagoguery.
You raise important points, Kelly. There's a strand of recent poli sci work about strengthening parties to make them more capable of doing the things you are talking about--focusing on the best candidates, electability, having a dependable brand, and competent people--rather than being led around by the loudest, most extreme voices who thrive in modern media. I do think the two political parties (outside of the presidential election which is baked in with two really set in their ways, inflexible people) could create mechanisms for "better politicians" to work together--new caucuses focused on common goals like national economic development, countering China, helping the most underdeveloped rural and urban areas, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading and sharing thoughts.
You have the perceived the problem, but from the wrong perspective. You think we need to teach an old dog new tricks. Instead, we need to move to another dog park entirely.
Think hard about why a liberal democracy is the most successful form of government found thus far. Is it because it picks a lot of great leaders? No, as you lay out, as it does not. What democracy does is allow us to *get rid of the worst leaders quickly and with little fuss*. That is the key beneficial feature of democracy.
After one realizes that, one sees that that benefit is why we tolerate a rotating cast of poor leaders, because we haven't found a way, but one also comes to the natural conclusion that the way to pick better leaders is NOT to keep picking them the same way.
It is also NOT "more democracy". We are in the pickle we're in in the US because of a few things, social media and globalization forces perhaps paramount among them, but one underappreciated facet is that in the US, parties have caved to the desire for "more democracy". I would make the case that "less democracy" in the party nomination setting served the country excellently for a very long time. The people don't do a great job of picking leaders alone, and having multiple filters helps. We used to have a party filter (pay your dues coming up) a media filter (they could find big problems and essentially tank a candidate, most often fairly though sometimes not), and the people voting. Now... we have the people voting.
The parties willingly ceded control of their party apparatus in the name of "more democracy" by opening up primaries, and yet they wonder why they need to sit around trying every trick in the book to get rid of someone who.... wasn't IN their party until he ran and wasn't eligible to run for office in their party at all by the old rules. They play a last minute superdelegate game and tank another candidate in favor of the party apparatus favorite, rather than just saying "you're an independent and thus not eligible" to the challenger in the first place. Lots of stupid games, and all introduced by simply opening up primaries. I would argue that this is one of the massive problems we have introduced. We open up primaries, we get the candidate who would get the wing 26% on either side, and then those two face off against one another.
Looked at another way, having an elite/party filter PLUS the vote of the people filter was a decent way to pick candidates, and having no selection process other than the people is very, very bad.
But overall, we simply need a new way to pick candidates. No one of the candidate type you seek will run, because of the way politics works. Politics is such a diry game and when you enter it you piss off 49% of the population no matter what. Plus the media lays into you and embarasses your family. Who wants that job? It turns out, mostly the people whose egos are so large that they outweigh those negatives, the people that dream of being president from elementary school onward. There are some people who do it to benefit others and society, I grant that. But they are not the norm.
So what is the answer? Not sure, but it ain't "teach politicians to be better". It's somewhere between change the system moderately favorably and "make everyone vote for a college of 435 people who then go in a room and debate picking 25 indivduals to become a committee who search for candidates and then come up with a short list of 5, then the 435 pick one of those for president. The president is never seen in public but can be fired on short notice, but rather remains entirely anonymous. the president is motivated to good action by the fact that after their term the people will vote them a financial reward based on how well they did, again anonymously."
That's out there, but it's closer to what would actually be successful then full democracy leading to modern social-media-driven demagoguery.
You raise important points, Kelly. There's a strand of recent poli sci work about strengthening parties to make them more capable of doing the things you are talking about--focusing on the best candidates, electability, having a dependable brand, and competent people--rather than being led around by the loudest, most extreme voices who thrive in modern media. I do think the two political parties (outside of the presidential election which is baked in with two really set in their ways, inflexible people) could create mechanisms for "better politicians" to work together--new caucuses focused on common goals like national economic development, countering China, helping the most underdeveloped rural and urban areas, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading and sharing thoughts.