Does anyone else get tired of this kind of thing?

Yeah...I get tired of it. I'm also sick of a-hole Al Gore. Anyone see him come out of obscurity recently to test the waters with his speech. He basically said Bush ran the country's economy into the ground, re-instated the country into deficit territory negating any surpluses, and that Bill and I had no trouble running the country or dealing with the economy(referring to how the economy was growing and prospering under their reign). That guy is a horse's ass. He's still playing the "I should have won....was robbed" angle on the Florida vote. Yeah...they want to take all the credit for economic prosperity. That's horsecrap. The .com/internet phenomenon had more to do with it than they did and once that was discovered for the farse that it was....it all came tumbling down right when Bush took over. Also, I seem to recall Bill was getting his salami eaten/massaged while he was talking on the phone to members of Congress? Not to mention he lied his butt off about "depends on what the definition of is...is" . Their complacent attitude toward terrorism also didn't help our country leading up to 9/11, either.

I pray to GOD Al Gore isn't our president next term. It all comes down to one thing in our political system....bipartisanship. That prevented an economic stimulus bill from being passed in a timely manner. All they seem to be able to do is agree to disagree along party lines...except on the war for terror in which they have really no choice but to go along with public opinion which will not put up with terror without a fight. Now, the whole drilling in Alaska thing....somehow, I don't think it's so much about affecting nature in Alaska as much as it is about ousting Bush from office next term. That is why they killed it. Politics smolitics.

 

im tired right now.

 

Both sides do it Surf, they did it with Clinton in office, and as long as their are Republicans and Democrats it'll always go on.

 

Unfortunately, standing up for your principles is not always the most effective way for you to enact change (which is really your ultimate goal). If the Democrats attack Bush when his poll numbers are at 80%, they make it less likely that they can get a majority and thus less likely that they can enact the proposals they ultimately want to enact.

It's really a "fight the battles you can win" type situation. I'm not sure it's the best thing in the world, but if your goal ultimately is to get your ideas in place, this is the best way to go, I guess.

 

If you want to see more substance, then we need to change the structure of our democracy. No, I'm not talking about the electoral college. Rather, we need to move for proportional representation.

District voting systems like we have encourage a 2-party system because there's no pay-off for coming in 2nd. Hence, it's in hte best interest of all involved to have as much appeal as possible to as many people as possible. This, usually, means avoiding controversey and checking the polls a great deal.

If, however, you moved to proportional representation, then you no longer have "umbrella parties" that are forced to be ridiculously attached to polls, since winning 20% of the vote still yields significant power in elections.

There are negatives to this, of course. Splintered government is more common, and extremists can have greater leverage. It also encourages one-issue voting, all too often (of course, some people already do that, and this would make it better, since you have many-issue parties currently scramblilng to accomodate 1-issue voters, which generates absurdities).

Still, such structural changes would result in more substantive elections, since issues would be the primary attracting forces.

Of course, this will never happen...

 

There was a guy in Houston about 5 years ago who ran for mayor. I believe it was Mayor Brown's first run for office. I cannot remember the guy's name but he was a businessman who was a fairly balanced guy in terms of his politics. He was mildly fiscally conservative and moderately socially liberal. He was very well spoken, young and energetic. He had good ideas. His downfall? He always told the truth.

The guy would answer questions honestly and directly. I remember one instance when they asked him how he would improve schools in the city and he said, unflinchingly, that he would do all he could to improve funding but that, unfortunately, the state regulated much of school funding so it was out of his hands for the most part. This was during an early debate.

Other candidates went on and on about how they would make education a primary concern of their tenure in office and they would increase funding, funnel more funds to schools, blah, blah, blah. Of course, they couldn't do that, but it sounded good.

Needless to say, he got trounced.

In politics, there is a saying: perception IS reality. It doesn't matter what you actually do only what you SEEM to be doing. If you want to keep your job, tell them what they want to hear and do whatever is necessary to keep the peace. It is the reality of politics in America and it sucks.

 

While reading this I thought 'that sucks' right before I got to your last sentence.

 

For the most part, I lean to the right....

but two party politics is the reason I'll never claim to be a Republican.

As far as I'm concerned, Republicans all SUCK!!!!


...just not quite as bad as Democrats.

 

Surfguy-

Well if Al Gore hadn't invented the internet we wouldn't have had such a great economy.

       

 

I agree I think, but I'd rearrange your words a bit. I would say that a politician should stand up for his principles, but that he also needs to pick his battles. He can't fight them all at once. I'm not saying that he should compromise his principles, just that he can't realistically be fighting on all fronts at the same time. There just aren't enough resources to go around. To use those resources most efficiently, and to maximise the chances of effecting real change (which I wholeheartedly agree is the ultimate goal), sometimes you have to wait until someone is ready to hear something before you to tell it to them.

I agree, and I think Canada should consider this as well. I think we should consider a hybrid system where, for argument's sake, 10-20% of the seats would be allocated according to the popular vote. This would avoid Italian style instability and still ensure a voice for every party that garnered any significant percentage of the vote. I think this would also encourage competent people and good leaders to become involved in non-mainline parties because if their parties received any significant percentage of the vote, they would be guaranteed a seat in the house.

I think this kind change could conceivably happen in Canada at some point.

To dovetail with our other discussion Jeff, I seriously doubt that it was strictly his truth telling that was the problem. It may well have been the way he crafted his overall vision. What did he say he could change? What was his overall platform? Why didn't it capture the imagination of the public? And I don't think that his losing the election was necessarily proof that his principles were wrong. Many great leaders and great ideas have lost elections somewhere along the line.

Jeff, Jeff. Are you crossing over to the dark side? If you SEEM to be doing things that you aren't, it will come out eventually. You can fool most of the people some of the time …, etc. A good politician can also control perception to a significant extent. He understands how to craft and communicate a vision, and to inspire people to buy into it. This is not the, "Don't vote for my opponent. He cheats on his wife!" approach. It is the, "I have a dream!" approach, or some such inspiring vision. One does not need to be MLK either. Has anybody here, other than Jeff, heard of Tommy Douglas?