I tend to not care for the process by which we elect the president - to put it mildly. The electoral college is a trainwreck waiting to happen (again), and why peopole didn't push for reform of it after 2000 is one of the weirdest things in the last 10 years of politics. Well, that is until you consider the considerble level of apathy about politics in the country at large. Cokie and company whined for a week or two about how small states would object to the change, and any discussion of change ended then.
Anyway, I've long thought (yes, pre-2000) that given the good line we talk on democracy, one person one vote and such, that the national executive should be elected by the people, using direct election with an instant run-off mechanism. This doesn't mean I'd like the kind of candidate such a system would produce. But it seems the most fitting system given what Americans at large seem to believe about the way our system should work, and what the president should represent.
But like I said, just because that seems to be the best system given our national views about the way government should operate, that doesn't mean the result would often be something I (or the country) would love. Or, for that matter, expect. An example of the unexpected? I was reading through a comments thread at Matthew Yglesias' place and was reminded that Stephen Douglas (who would have likely won the presidency in 1860 under a system in which the president was selected by the median national voter) died 3 months after Lincoln took office. So if Douglas had instead been inaugurated in 1861, he would have been quickly succeeded by his Vice President, former Georgia Governor and Senator Herschel Vespasian Johnson. My, how history would have been different. Not least by having "Vespasian" enter the list of famous US political names.
Posted by armand at March 19, 2007 10:11 PM | TrackBack | Posted to History | Politics