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The United States Constitution turned 200 yesterday with due fanfare. Most of the national news of late, though, has been devoted to the 1988 presidential election, still more than a year away.
Will Pat Schroeder make it official? What does the Rev.
Pat Robertson's success in Iowa portend for candidates who
wear a collar? Could Gary Hart's Nightline
interview
mean a comeback for candidates caught without their
pants?
It struck me that I don't really care. No president has
ever done anything that had any direct effect on my life,
except for Richard Nixon, and he probably didn't mean
anything personal 15 years ago when I received a letter
that said Greetings from the President of the United
States. Your friends and neighbors at Local Draft Board No.
9...
The presidency hasn't affected me, and the converse also holds true. If my votes since attaining majority had meant anything, the recent Leaders of the Free World would have been George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Ed Clark and Walter Mondale.
What's worse is that even if your candidate wins, our system pretty well guarantees that you'll be disappointed.
We expect our presidents to be good family men.
To become president, they must spend at least two years
jetting across the continent, eating dismal banquet food
instead of home cooking, and operating in hotel suites
instead of sleeping in their own homes.
No matter how many smiling pictures we see of the candidate with his wife and children, we ought to remember that actions speak louder than words. A man truly devoted to his wife and children would be with them, rather than going out of his way to hang out with state chairmen, caucus spokespersons, delegate fixers, PAC bagmen, media consultants and ward heelers.
We expect our presidents to exhibit sanity and good judgment. But what sane and judicious man would voluntarily subject himself to the rubber chicken circuit, round after round of moronic TV interviews, the badgering by a pack of reporters, persistent jet lag and the other travails of our extended campaigns?
To ask that question is to answer it. Happy, productive and well-rounded people don't drop everything and run for president. Campaigning for the presidency is so demanding that it could be attractive only to power-hungry zealots with an overwhelming desire to inflict their views on the rest of us. Our best people -- those who mind their own business -- certainly wouldn't run for president.
In two centuries, American civilization has advanced so much that our potential presidents include prayerful Pat Robertson for the GOP and the seven dwarfs for the Democrats. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would now have a hard time staying out of jail, let alone seeking the nation's highest office. They grew tobacco and marijuana, kept mistresses, fomented armed rebellions and drank ale before their 21st birthdays.
Despite their conspicuous lack of modern virtues, I think the Founding Fathers had the right idea for selecting presidents, and it's still embedded in the Constitution whose birthday we just celebrated.
As you may recall from your civics classes, the
president is not elected directly by the public. In theory,
we voters select 535 presidential electors.
They
form the electoral college,
which does the actual
electing of the president.
Suppose we put this into practice. Every leap year, we Coloradans would vote for eight people of demonstrated sound and fair judgment. They would join the 527 other presidential electors, people who really did take the time to study the issues.
Since as much care ought to be devoted to selecting a capable president for the United States as in hiring the CEO for a big corporation, the process would be similar to that for any other high-level executive position. Candidates would submit résumés, references would be checked, the committee would conduct interviews and, by the end of the year, announce its selection.
Just by following our own Constitution, we could eliminate sensationalized scandals, idiotic TV commercials, emotional pandering to wool-hat mobs. Candidates would not have to sell their souls to special-interest groups in exchange for the contributions necessary to finance expensive national campaigns. And I defy anyone to say that the resulting presidents would do any worse than what we've managed to elect so far.
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