[HS]

https://medium.com/@ArticlesOfUnity/the-articles-of-unity-f544f930d336

[Art]

IN the interest of maintaining good relationships especially on a public forum, I decline to discuss Politics or Religion. I have little use for either as they both expect people to blindly follow a path that has yet to be proven to my satisfaction.

But, good luck on that question!

[WriterOfMinds]

We the people draft two candidates: one from the center-left, one from the center-right. Once elected, they agree to govern as a team.

I think I should note that we sort of already tried this. Very early in US history, there was no President/VP ticket. Instead, a vote was only cast for President. First place got to be the President, and second place got to be the Vice President. So we ended up with a President and VP who belonged to different parties, and it went badly, because they couldn't work effectively as a team.  The Twelfth Amendment was ratified to correct this.

Of course a center-right and center-left candidate are going to work better together than a far-right and a far-left candidate, but I wouldn't expect their road to be completely smooth even so.

It is all very well to say, "We need a party that works for the national interest! We need patriots!" But this glosses over the deep disagreements among the American public re: which choices are in the national interest, and what a patriot looks like.

I myself am not planning to vote for either Trump or Biden. Whether I could vote for this hypothetical Unity ticket remains to be seen. The article is too sparing of actual policy details for me to tell whether this ticket would meet my minimum standards or not.

[Don Patrick]

In my opinion, the taboo on discussing politics contributes to it ending up an unmitigated mess of parties that only think of their own side, having never had to question or compromise their views in civilised debate.

This idea of assigning a center-left and center-right duo would essentially give you two Bidens, and it doesn't hinder one of them to be a sell-out. I've always considered Vice-presidents to be the representation of the other side, at least under Democratic presidents, it's generally a means of appealing to a broader base of support. It seems to me that giving them equal power would assure a status quo, albeit a more stable one than the current U-turns every 8 years. In my opinion US politics has a lot of systematic issues, and what is needed is more proportional representation of issues, not sides. Plans, not winners. Other countries do this by having more than two parties to choose from, and ensuring that no one party can attain a majority of power.

Let's not forget that the imbalance is not limited to the president. No matter who you put at the top, one-sided Senate or Congress majorities still block the works.

[Art]

My granddaughter asked the question, Why does there even HAVE to be any parties at all? Why can't we simply pick the best person for the job., Background research, previous jobs, trustworthy, having the best interest of the people and country at heart instead of some party-sided person because of some elephant or jackass?

For my own thought, I want to see TERM LIMITS!! NO MORE CAREER POLITICIANS!! Lining their pockets, pork belly projects, bribes, etc. They were elected to best represent the people of their districts! Not to steal from them!!

After their term is over, they go back to being a humble Citizen once again. Selling cars, writing a book, growing their crops, raising their families, etc.

One term of 4 years and could be elected to one more 4-year term. This applies to and for ALL Senators and Congressmen!

<Poofff> - ...and then I woke up...

[Don Patrick]

Those are some excellent points, I'm glad you shared them. Parties are normally formed for the same reason as unions: to represent a specific public interest or group of people, but in some countries parties have conglomerated power to the point where they don't really stand for specific interests anymore. For contrast, last election in the Netherlands had 80 parties on the ballot, among which a party for animal rights, labour, the elderly, Christianity, ethnic minorities, and a party whose only focus was copyright reform. America has a third party somewhere, the greens, but they've been pushed into a ditch by the first-past-the-post system. A president or chancellor should ideally not be aligned with a party, I agree with your granddaughter there. In parliamentary systems, the whole of parliament chooses the person they can all agree on is best.

I think restricting presidents to one term is a good idea, I don't know why that suggestion hasn't been on the board. It's long enough to get some things done but not long enough to become corrupted or out of touch. So far the only suggestion of real change I've seen is to do away with the electoral college which has outlived its original purpose, and some states are instating laws that the electorate vote should match the popular vote, but from my point of view it has only ever made 3% of difference.