Death of the two-party system

Post #31,529 by Ric Locke 3/10/02 12:07:31 PM Reply	Death of the two-party system Yeah, it's probably time. Unfortunately. What we did in the past was much more complex. As Ben points out, the two parties tended to be driven toward the center -- that is, the system itself tended to move toward consensus. The system used in other countries, with multiple political parties and coalition politics, still existed here, but within the two mainstream parties rather than at the top level. There are still remnants of that, mainly visible among the Republicans because their extreme wing (the Religious Right) is much more visible for several reasons than the extreme wings of the Democrats. I say "unfortunately" because unlike parliamentary democracies we have a very strong chief executive. Our President is essentially a King with term limits; the only real check on Presidential power is the fact that he has to leave after eight years. Having the President as the visible chief of some whacko coalition is going to be very dangerous, folks. The ultimate result is gonna be Italy -- more or less total inability to elect a Government. If you want to put this system into place, please start thinking about what happens when we can't put a coalition together to select a President, and the whole system is run by unelected bureaucrats for extended periods of time. As for the mechanics and getting people to understand it, might it not be easier to assign points? Instead of making people make two different choices (first and second), tell them to assign +1 to the ones they really like, zero to the ones they can stand but don't really care for, and -1 to the ones they hate. The labels might be "Like", "Don't Care", "Hate", but the counting system would function on the numbers. Highest score wins. Regards, Ric
Post #31,534 by JayMehaffey 3/10/02 2:07:01 PM Reply	Potentially a problem Electing a total nut case is a serious protential problem. In particular, the US president has too much power to use US troops outside the US without congresional approval. However, I can also see some offsetting factors. The most important being that, unlike most parlamentary systems, there is no connection between the president's party and congressional party lines. It is very likely that a radical president (from either end of the spectrum) would find himself without the power to push the things he want through congress. Keep in mind also, that with this system you can't get into an Italy style n-way deadlock. Somebody will win the election, they may end up winning with only a fraction of the votes but somebody will win. I can see at least one other potential problem with this kind of system. First, listing a primary and secondary choice will work well initially, but there could be problems down the road. The system starts to get a little strange when there are more then 4 or 5 viable canidates. Eventually it might be necissary to move to a system where you pick your top 3 or top 4. In some ways, it would be ideal to have people rank every canidate. But that runs into problem itself, if there are more then half a dozen entries, it is very likely that there are some I don't even know anything about. In any case, if we did role this out nation wide, there would be 3 or 4 election cycle while people got used to the new system. I would expect that in the first election or two the only result would be getting to see what percentage of the population really wanted to vote for Nader and the other third party canidates. However, seeing honest numbers here would give the third parties a major boost. I also expect that the first third party canidate to get elected to president is liable to get it in the shorts. The two major parties would work together to see that the president didn't achive anything of importance. This will probably do more damage to them then to the president, but congresscritters can be amazingly vindictive and short sighted. I thought of one advantage of having more then two viable parties that hasn't been mentioned here yet either. With every extra viable canidate added, it becomes that much harder for companies to just buy them all off. Jay
Post #31,537 by wharris2 3/10/02 2:30:11 PM Reply	Military power outside borders? Actually, that is strictly speaking the only legal use of our armed forces, and Congress supposedly does have the power (if it should choose to exercise it) to cut off funding after thirty or sixty days (I forget which.) Unfortunately, the U.S. congress has become too accustomed to passing blanket authorizations (such as the war on terror) while weaseling out of actual declarations of war. That was a problem in Vietnam, where after a decade Congress put their its foot down and passed a bill disallowing the use of the military in Southeast Asia. That went from one unwise extreme (Johnson and Nixen waging an undeclared war) to the other (making it impossible to even try to support our South Vietnam allies - not that Nixon would have been able to get anything through Congress in the last year or two of his presidency.) Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt
Post #31,551 by ben_tilly 3/10/02 7:08:28 PM Reply	POTENTIAL problem? Erm. Did you take a look at the lot we elected this time around? Cheers, Ben "... I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything." --Richard Feynman
Post #31,558 by nking 3/10/02 7:49:00 PM Reply	The Robot or the Dummy? Guess which one we elected? I didn't vote for either of them, I voted for Nader, but somehow Bush got my vote? WTF? Hey Box, quote me on this willya? "What this country needs is more Professional Wrestlers to enter the political arena!" Take a look at Jessie "The Mind" Ventura, we need more like him, who will be next? "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan? Jake "The Snake" Roberts? George "The Animal" Steele? "Macho Man" Randy Savage? Politicians apparently not only need to be a wrestler, but also have to have some sort of nickname? ;) "Will work for fair salary and benefits, seeking company with integrity."
Post #31,557 by nking 3/10/02 7:46:28 PM Reply	Bring back the Whigs! Now there was a political party! Character assasination, etc. Too bad it disbanded? Put H. Ross perot in charge of it now that he lost control of the Reform Party and needs something to do these days. :) "Will work for fair salary and benefits, seeking company with integrity."

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