…even the one with teeth that Mickey Kaus (via Instapundit) is advocating here: if you don’t like either of the two major party’s candidates, join one of the parties and make sure that it produces better candidates. Admittedly, that’s work and everything; but it’s also a lot less dismissive of the people who are already engaged in the dull, unglamorous life of maintaining and and growing the local party infrastructures. For that matter: the purpose of a representative is to represent. Even a dunderhead can do things for his or her constituents while in office, and even dunderheads can have a staff. Vacant slots on the legislative chart can do and have neither.
I’m a little surprised that Mickey’s arguing this, actually: the man ran for Senate, after all. Admittedly, given his views he was running under the wrong party…
I respect Mickey, and clearly he’s more of an old fashioned Democrat, but he keeps reminding me he’s still very much a Democrat/liberal.
I could live with Mickey being truly representative of Democrats and liberals, though.
The problem with your theory, Moe, is that there seems to be something in the water served in DC, or something. People enter politics with the goals you mention (getting the parties back in line), and in just a few years they’re golfing buddies with Trent Lott, helping to carve out government graft to friends and relatives of theirs.
I don’t know that there is a solution to this, to be honest. The US avoided it for years by custom, more or less, but once the rubicon was crossed and the guys running the Federal Government got a taste of real power, I don’t see any of them giving it back up, short of armed revolution. And Armed revolution is a chancy thing, more likely to replace one set of thugs with another.
Hear, Hear, Moe.
Skip – the price of peace is eternal vigilance. The work doesn’t end with an election. You have to keep the people you elect honest, and get rid of them if (or when?) they turn bad.
That’s the biggest problem I have with the concept of term limits – if imposed, they would encourage the electorate to be lazy. (But this is a conversation better had elsewhere, another time.)