It's dangerous, I know, but I'm foraying into presidential politics on the blog today. Yikes.
We all know that much of the country doesn't thing very highly of President Bush. Pollingreport.com indicates that through the many polls done this year, Bush's approval rating has varied between 22 and 38 percent. Most of the results tend to fall in the 27-33 range. Congress, on the other hand, has an approval rating between 13 and 33 percent. (The second highest poll was only 28%.) My quick glance indicates that the average results are in the high teens or low 20's, and that in the last 3 months no result has been higher than 23%. The two major party presidential nominees and their running mates have a combined 63 years experience in congress. (35 for Biden, 25 for McCain, 3 for Obama and none for Palin.) Now my point: as we come closer to electing a new president, why have we chosen all of our options from a group of people that we nearly all agree are doing a terrible job?
(Possible answer #1: We are idiots.)
6 comments:
I am of the opinion that governors (and former governors) make better Presidents due to their executive experience (I mentioned this the other day to John Hollenhorst but it wasn't interesting enough...).
I have no answer as to why we choose our President from a group of people that nobody approves of.
I am going to go with your proposed reason :)
I think you have to look at where the low approval ratings are coming from.
Bush is unpopular because people generally believe he has caused a bunch of problems.
Congress is unpopular not because they are perceived to have caused a bunch of problems, but because they either failed to prevent the president from doing so (pre-2006 Republicans), or failed to hold him accountable for doing so (post-2006 Democrats).
I agree that governors generally fare better in presidential elections. Maybe the reason we're going for senators this year is that the balance of power is currently skewed in favor of the Executive branch, and we think that things are more likely to balance out under a former legislator than another executive.
You also have to consider that the president, as an individual, is unpopular. Meanwhile, the congress, as a whole, is unpopular. There are many congressmen and senators who are individually very popular and highly regarded by their constituents.
It makes sense to replace the former with one of the latter.
I'd suggest the answer is because the system is set up such that most good candidates don't really want the trouble and of the mediocre candidates we have a poor system of picking.
For an example look at the effect the design WV electoral system has had on the Presidential race. If not for that the Republicans might well be running a ticket with a governor at the top.
If we restructure the system to take advantage of all the good work smart people have done in voting theory and create more sensible limits on suffrage we could probably build a better system. Alas, we haven't really got that option. Especially the latter part when it has been so indoctrinated into us that universal suffrage is good.
2 words - Group think.
Post a Comment