How to attract good candidates?

[dsm]

Rather than comment on how bad the current crop of political candidates for "put your favorite political office here", I thought I'd see if the collective intelligence here could come up with reasons why politics is such dirty business and how it should be improved in the future.

Things to consider:


How much of candidates backgrounds should be off-limits to the public?
Should the top candidate choose his cabinet or should they all be elected?
Should there be more specialized departments rather than one head of state?
Are term-limits a good or a bad thing?
Should we move away from representative democracy and towards pure democracy? How much?


Feel free to add to the list.

[DanishDynamite]

dsm:
*How much of candidates backgrounds should be off-limits to the public?Whatever is freely available should be...uhhh...available. Personally, I don't care about the personal history of a candidate unless he/she has a criminal record.
*Should the top candidate choose his cabinet or should they all be elected?Whatever is mandated by the country's constitution.
*Should there be more specialized departments rather than one head of state?There should only be one head of state.
*Are term-limits a good or a bad thing?If the "checks and balances" are solid enough, I would say they are irrelevant.
*Shuld we move away from representative democracy and towards pure democracy? How much?No. The minority has a better chance of being heard with representative democracy.

[dsm]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
Whatever is freely available should be...uhhh...available. Personally, I don't care about the personal history of a candidate unless he/she has a criminal record.


You would think most people would be that way. However, delving into things like Ahnold's sexual history from 25 years ago is going to "taint" people's perception of him today. Particularly if it is harped on by news organizations that are looking to make news out of nothing special.


Whatever is mandated by the country's constitution.


The question is whether it focuses too much power in the hands of the elected official. Of course, electing everyone is probably a recipe for getting nothing done...


There should only be one head of state.


It was an off-the-wall question. I guess I'm thinking that things might be simpler (and, therefore, more attractive to potential candidates) if responsibilities were better divided up and simplified.


If the "checks and balances" are solid enough, I would say they are irrelevant.


The "checks and balances" should prevent incumbents from running amok, but does it do anything to prevent the creation of an "old boy network"?


No. The minority has a better chance of being heard with representative democracy.


Even if we improved our IT infrastructure to make it easier for people to get involved?

[Ed]

I really don't see how you can have an elected cabinet. Trust is a big issue.

On term limits absolutely yes. The notion of a "profesional" polatition sickens me. Two and out.

[DanishDynamite]

dsm:You would think most people would be that way. However, delving into things like Ahnold's sexual history from 25 years ago is going to "taint" people's perception of him today. Particularly if it is harped on by news organizations that are looking to make news out of nothing special.I don't care if a candidate has a preference for intercourse with sheep. Really. What matters to me is the candidate's political platform.

I understand that in some prudish countries, things are different. ;)

The question is whether it focuses too much power in the hands of the elected official. Of course, electing everyone is probably a recipe for getting nothing done...Electing everyone would probably also result in a disfunctional government.
It was an off-the-wall question. I guess I'm thinking that things might be simpler (and, therefore, more attractive to potential candidates) if responsibilities were better divided up and simplified.The powers of a head of state depends a lot on the power granted by the constitution. In the US, for example, the president is a fairly powerful position. This is not the case for the Prime Minister of Denmark, for example.

I'm not sure which model is the best. There are pros and cons for each.
The "checks and balances" should prevent incumbents from running amok, but does it do anything to prevent the creation of an "old boy network"?No. But if the population is bamboozled enough by frequent commercials to look away from any obvious negative decisions of the incumbent, it seems to me that they deserve what they get.
Even if we improved our IT infrastructure to make it easier for people to get involved?Depends what you mean.

[DanishDynamite]

EdGod: On term limits absolutely yes. The notion of a "profesional" polatition sickens me. Two and out. I don't see why. If a particular politician, after many years of being responsible, is still felt by the voters to be doing a great job, what's the problem? The only problem I see, as I said before, is if the incumbent is somehow able to evade the checks and balances, even if his administration did something wrong, such that the voters wouldn't know about it.

[shanek]

Originally posted by dsm
How much of candidates backgrounds should be off-limits to the public?

No more and no less than would be available otherwise. If a candidate is not forthcoming with his history, that should be a cause for the appropriate concern.

Should the top candidate choose his cabinet or should they all be elected?

The cabinet is just a group of people the President has chosen to help him out. It's not in the Constitution; the President does this as a function of being the head of the Executive Branch. He doesn't have to have a cabinet at all; it's a tradition started by George Washington, who thought it was a good idea. Every president since then has followed suit.

So no, the voters should have nothing to say about it. The President chooses his cabinet.

Should there be more specialized departments rather than one head of state?

"More specialized departments" would only increase the bureaucatic nightmare.

Are term-limits a good or a bad thing?

I'm on the fence on this one. On the one hand, I can certainly understand the desire to limit the amount of time a politician has power. On the other hand, I think people should have the right to vote for whomever they want.

I think the first step should be to get rid of these so-called "campaign finance reform" (really incumbent protection) laws and make it easier to get these bozos out of office. Then we'll be in a better position to see if term limits make sense.

Should we move away from representative democracy and towards pure democracy?

Absolutely not! Democracy is just a tyranny of the majority.

You need to make sure the ballots are equally accessible to everyone. When the ballot is limited only to approved parties, independents have to go through a whole rigamarole to get on the ballot that recognized party members don't have to do, and they just ignore write-in votes, this severely limits the number of people who can even get on the ballot. So it stands to reason that, under a situation like that, those most hungry for power will tend to get on the ballot much, much more often.

[Ed]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
EdGod: I don't see why. If a particular politician, after many years of being responsible, is still felt by the voters to be doing a great job, what's the problem? The only problem I see, as I said before, is if the incumbent is somehow able to evade the checks and balances, even if his administration did something wrong, such that the voters wouldn't know about it.

Because getting reelected causes them to make decisions and get money for things which are questionable. The point of their term seems to be to prepair for their next term. Any way you slice it, if they get money, they are crooks.

Oh yeah, let them live with the laws that they make.

[DanishDynamite]

Originally posted by Ed


Because getting reelected causes them to make decisions and get money for things which are questionable. The point of their term seems to be to prepair for their next term. Any way you slice it, if they get money, they are crooks.

Oh yeah, let them live with the laws that they make. If getting reelected causes them to make questionable decisions, why is more than one term allowed in the US? And do you have any evidence for this?

[dsm]

Originally posted by shanek

If a candidate is not forthcoming with his history, that should be a cause for the appropriate concern.


Hate to hijack my own thread, but...

Maybe the question should be thought of more from the news organization perspective. A news organization can "spin" a candidates background in one of two ways:


This is what happened previously, but it doesn't mean much in the current discussion, so we won't discuss it much.
This is what happened previously, but, regardless of what it means to the issues, it sells and we'll make it a prominent topic of discussion.


Is there too much control(?) of the discussion by news organizations in search of revenue? Should news organization be (somehow) encouraged to report the news without the issue of revenue so that they report the news and do not try to make the news?

[WildCat]

Start by disqualifying anyone with a law degree. ;)

[a_unique_person]

Make voting compulsory.
Make it possible for people who aren't millionaires to run for office.
Revise the electoral process. The founding fathers did some brainstorming when they thought it up hundreds of years ago, maybe it's time to rethink the whole thing. Some things worked, some need to be changed.

[dsm]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite

If getting reelected causes them to make questionable decisions, why is more than one term allowed in the US?


I suspect because the length of the term was originally mandated by the Constitution. When the issue of "length of service" came up, it was easier to limit the number of terms than set a larger (or smaller) size for a single term. In the case of the President, for instance, limiting him to one term of 4 years was probably considered too short and cause too volatile a government (with the Executive Branch changing every 4 years).

I would be inclined to putting politicians in for one term of longer time (say 10 years for the President) provided there were good "checks and balances" to allow for throwing the incumbent out if they really are incompetent (but not willy-nilly). In this way, elected officials could focus on running the government rather than running for their next office.

[DanishDynamite]

dsm:Is there too much control(?) of the discussion by news organizations in search of revenue? Should news organization be (somehow) encouraged to report the news without the issue of revenue so that they report the news and do not try to make the news? Personally, I'm very much pro freedom of the press.

And yet, we never see personal crap (like drug or sex or military history) published in the major newspapers here. My feeling is that there is a "gentlemans agreement" among the major papers not to decend to this level. I'm not (at all) sure an agreement exists, but I'm glad that:

a) Such accounts aren't persued or published

b)No one cares about them, anyway.

It is probably a cultural thing.

[jj]

Why would anyone with half a brain want to run for an office?

Given the responses in this thread about past history (relevant or not), special interests, perceptions of special interests, hit campaigns, etc, why would anyone with a brain want to run...

If we want candidates with brains enough to do the job, we'll have to start by educating the population again, and not teaching trash like scientific relativism or creation "science".

We'll have to teach civics, cover realpolitik, teach people how to examine the propaganda (yes, most of it inept) in the newspaper from all sides, and how to reject it.

Educators fear this. Let us not presently go into the reasons why.

[dsm]

Originally posted by DanishDynamite
Personally, I'm very much pro freedom of the press.

Can there truly be "freedom of the press" if the press has to "make a living"? Ultimately, isn't there (eventually) a loss of journalistic integrity in order to make the almighty buck?

;)

[Samus]

Originally posted by dsm
How much of candidates backgrounds should be off-limits to the public? This is a tough call. For sure, there are public records, and they are public for a reason. I think any public record should be fair game. Nothing more. Quite frankly, I don't care if a candidate had a DWI 30 years ago and hasn't had a drink since, and I don't think that conviction should be used against them. The same with recreational drug use from several decades ago. Mistakes made that long ago have long since been paid for.

That said, if there are more recent offenses, or a trend of bad behavior, that certainly needs to be made known.

Originally posted by dsm
Should the top candidate choose his cabinet or should they all be elected? The elected official should be able to choose who they have as advisors and assistants. It would make no sense for the American electorate to vote for the SecDef, as it also makes no sense for me to vote for the county coroner. The executive at that echelon should pick the person most qualified.

Originally posted by dsm
Should there be more specialized departments rather than one head of state? No, one head of state. It's a unity of command issue, and you always want to have somewhere that the buck can stop. Not that it really matters, because the president can only do so much without funding from Congress.

Originally posted by dsm
Are term-limits a good or a bad thing? Dunno, my jury is still out on this. I'm inclined to say they're a bad thing -- as long as the electorate is willing to re-elect, they should be allowed to re-elect. However, I favor term limits because they keep fresh blood in our political system. Like shanek, I'm on the fence here.

Another interesting question would be term limits, or the ease of removal, of civil servants. For sure, it is important to have bureaucratic professionals, people who know how to get the job done. You wouldn't want someone in charge of municipal sewage that has no knowledge of sewage systems. Then again, you can have bureaucrats that stagnate and cause problems, and it might be nice to make removal of them easier.

Originally posted by dsm
Should we move away from representative democracy and towards pure democracy? How much? Representative democracy. But a better kind of it. We need better representation in the form of more, stronger, political parties. This two-party system just results in both parties going after the same people (swing voters), so they both sound like they're saying the same thing (don't believe me? Think back to Election 2000). Also, when both parties decide to scratch each other's backs, you end up with things like a $2.2 trillion budget, and the president merely signing any spending bill that comes across his desk so he can get what he wants from Congress.

As for the U.S. - our political system is dirty because it was framed that way, we really have no choice. The founders were so afraid of centralized power that they created a system where no one entity can have too much of it. The result: three branches of federal government that fall just short of having any significant amount of authority. Deadlocks, back-scratching, and a collective political battleground for power is what results. The president needs Congress, he's useless without them. Similarly, Congress can pass laws 'till the cows come home, but it is the executive branch that can choose to implement those laws as they see fit.

One way to make politics less dirty is to take power away from governments. One reason we see the system we have is because pork barrel spending is woefully out of control. Politicians can get spending items for their districts, which keeps the constituents content with what they have, even though the elected official might not necessarily be doing what's best for the country/state/county/etc. Take the power away by mandating balanced budgeting and by restricting government sources of income (i.e. removing taxes).

Of course, that will never solve all the problems. Politics is tough business, and its very complicated, because of the conflicting interests.

[shanek]

Very sensible and reasoned points, dwb.

[Tmy]

Teh press is so tabloid that they scare off people. Everthing is a witch hunt. You cant even be a contestant on Survivor or American Idol wh/o them digging out skeletons.

In this age of computers and video no one can hide anything. If i ran for president there woudl be no shortage of embarssing pictures from college partying.