Change You Can Believe In--For Real This Time

If the prospect of the Trump – Biden presidential election fills you with horror and despair, you might give some thought to not just replacing both candidates but the presidency as well, at least as we now conceive it.

For some time now, but maybe since the Kennedy administration (which ended in a hail of voter-suppressed gunfire), I have been thinking that one of the biggest problems with American democracy is the presidency itself, the idea that the chief magistrate of the country should be one person elected every four years by a few swing voters in Ohio, North Carolina, or Florida.

What good can be said of an office that regularly is awarded to the likes of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, and that this year, for its finalists, has Donald Trump and Joe Biden, men who otherwise would not be eligible to coach Little League teams or lead Scout troops (pussy grabbers and hair sniffers need not apply).--MS

I like a lot, not all, of the thinking in this essay.  It's somewhat outside the box and something similar ought to be the focus of a new constitutional convention, which I think is key to fixing this holy mess.

Could it happen without more massive repression and violence against our citizens, while deriving a new consensus?

There's always risk; ask the ghosts of our first revolutionaries.


TS