You are subscribing to a common fallacy. You are separating the entity of government from those who run it and distancing them from who pulls their strings. Tell me, do you know of a thing called a government whip? No, because there is no such thing, but you do have whips in Congress who's job is to make members toe the party line. Note not the business of the people, but the party and we have two of those. Eliminating opposition to action does not discourage but embolden those who belong to a controlling party.
No, no, you misunderstand - that is exactly what I am aiming at rectifying. Strategy, contacts and above all money are pooled under a common brand - the Democrat or Republican party brands - because it is the most efficient use of time and money possible under your current system. Politicians don't want to be beholden to anyone but are forced to be in order to survive. Independents are rare because having a personal brand strong enough to go it alone is extremely difficult (and costly).
If you remove the need of these individuals to lean on party organizations quite so much and all of a sudden you have politicians thinking for themselves or actually listening to constituents. And the only way to do that is to either severely curtail the amount allowed to be spent on an election campaign, space the campaigns out further, or both.
Offhand, I believe that the Westminster system of government followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and others originally conceived of
the party whip position. For a time my own MP was that person, so I'm well informed about the position.
Term limits are needed to weed out the people in power. I also think we need both branches of government to have 4 year terms. 2 years is too few and 6 years is too many. Put everyone on 4 year terms and have them all come up for reelection at the same time every 4 years. This way we can vote them all out at once also.
Then instead of mid-term elections have a vote of confidence where we can vote encumbents and all federally appointments, incleding Federal Departments like FBI, CIA, EPA, EDUCATION, FCC, TRANSPORTATION, etc., inclucing federal judges, out of office if that is what is needed for progress. We would do the same thing during the primaries ever 4 years. Once out you cant run for any federal office or be appointed to any federal job. We would have the same kind of vote during the primaries. We also need to streamline the processes and get rid of all caucuses. Caucuses just are unamerican and dont make sense in this modern era. They seem communist to me. We also need to quit having primaries in these miniature states first. We should have primaries in the largest states first like California and Florida and Texas. Lets start in the South where it is warmer.
Lets also limit the amount of time spent on the primaries. They need to be held within 6 months of the election not for 2 years.
We should also consider doing away with some of the czars and redundant Departments.
I also think we should limit the number of delegates we award by population to 4 per state. Then get rid of half of the people in the senate. One Senator per state should be enough. The goal should be to pay for less people in government and not more. Also no one state should be able to amass too many elected Representatives in the House. It has just become stupid-ville.
Again, this is a horrifically bad idea. What company that you've ever held a position in could turn out successful, useful products if it had 100% employee churn every four years? Everything would be a random, insane, at odds with itself mess. That is already your current state. How would speeding up the churn help?
There seems to be this notion that holding politicians accountable leaves them open to corruption....
It sort of boggle the mind to hear such notions, but you are making a decent case that it's their constant bid for reelection that gets them to sell themselves.
Problem is, they still have to get elected in the FIRST place. Perhaps many of them are paid for on day 1. Leaving them in office does not help anyone.
No man wants to be beholden to anyone, even politicians. And the man who self-selects to work in public service is currently the kind of man who excels at selling themselves. Lessen the need for a would-be politician to do these things and you've taken a big step forward.
Ultimately I think reasonable nations will move towards a highly technocratic system. The workings of society with the addition of technology and mounds of new legislation are so complex today that very little can actually be accomplished in one or two Presidential terms. Right now the burden falls to senior unelected bureaucrats to maintain consistency during administrations, which leads to them demanding job guarantees to insulate themselves by vengeful new bosses. That too has a negative impact on the quality and type of worker who ends up in government. All because of the rotten system at the top.
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