Dear U.S.A. - Why does it take so long? [Lengthy presidential campaigns]

Politics & Elections
1

I know that electing a leader is important.

However, we do usually have notice that an election is coming. We don’t want to hamstring the government we do have, but we do want to offer challengers sufficient time to state their cases fully and clearly, so that voters understand who and what is at stake.

Your system, though, seems to me, at least, to cripple your current president for at least a quarter of the time he/she is elected to serve. It seems to be a ridiculous waste. They are forced to become a lame duck or scrambler focused on winning next time and/or seeing the last year of their term evaporate. Sheesh, who goes through all of this to elect someone who, by design! can be effective for a maximum of 75% of the time?

The President has so much to do and there is so much fuss about electing them in the first place that to purposely throw away the last year of their time seems very odd.

The entire last year of the four year term of your so-painfully-elected president is wasted in this way.

In which other job are you hired to be effective for a maximum of 75% of the time that you are hired for?

I have heard (too many times in my maybe too-long life) that it’s because you’re the “only true democracy” on this Earth and that the decision is oh, so weighty.

By the way, whenever one of you pontificates in that way, you should listen for an instant. You may be able to hear people in some other countries responding, “Hmmph! Again with the ‘we’re the only true democracy, we’re the only ones with free speech, we’re the only ones with freedom’ nonsense.”

But there are other countries (like my own, Canada) that have elections that last three to six weeks and seem to get the job done. We let the prime minister run the country until shortly before the election. We know an election is coming. We talk about it. Sometimes boringly endlessly.

Then, the time comes. We agonize, we vote. I don’t think we’ve missed all that much that would have made a difference if we’d taken a year instead of a few weeks. We don’t take the decision lightly. We debate, sometimes passionately. We prepare. We research. We listen. We know an election is coming because the current prime minister has served close to his/her term. We think and worry and look at who is running and what their positions are. We examine and argue, sometimes ad nauseum.

Your system is theatre on a grand scale, that’s for sure. But to what end? Why the huge conventions and the incomprehensible waste of leaving your current president to flop around like a hooked fish for a full fourth of their elected term?

Think about who’s running. Consider them. But, my goodness, what takes so long to figure out?

If it isn’t posturing to show how great America is, what is the purpose?

We (most of us) are with the U.S.A. and truly care about you and wish you very well, but what the heck is with the overblown, self-important, “only democracy on Earth” election process?

I apologize if these thoughts seem harsh. I really don’t mean it that way. It’s that the process seems very bloated and is truly baffling to me.

So many important elected officials who, it seems, could and should be thinking about and taking action upon more important issues, are now stuck talking and talking and speechifying about the election, that I really have been wondering what the heck’s up with the length of the process.

(Full disclosure: If I were American, I would vote for Hillary Clinton. But I knew that from the get-go, despite admittedly having been oddly intrigued by watching a few train wrecks on “The Apprentice” a few years ago. :slight_smile: )

2

I (and many Americans) also think it takes WAY too long. Fifteen months when essentially no legislation or initiatives can pass, nor appointments (e.g. SCOTUS) approved? Insanity.

ETA: I’ve never heard the “we’re exceptionally weighty” argument you mentioned. It’s just how the process happened to develop.

3

American democracy is a bit like British plumbing. In both cases, the countries concerned suffer from having been early adopters. When the Americans constructed the democratic mechanisms under which they still operate, they really were the only democracy around. Plus, they had to construct mechanisms that would serve a large country with a dispersed population and very limited and (by our standards) primitive transport infrastructure.

Of course, they could improve their mechanisms in the light of experience, international comparisons, and modern conditions. And to some extent they have done; for example, the President used to be inaugurated four months after election day; nowaday’s its only two months.

On the other hand, some of the changes they’ve made have served to prolong the process. The widespread use of primary elections, for example, is something that has only come about within the last generation or so, and it means that the period during which candidates are campaigning directly to the public is much, much longer than it used to be. Plus, with the impact of radio and television advertising, I think campaigns have much more visibility and impact in people’s daily lives than was the case when you only saw what was in the paper if you chose to read the relevant articles, and you only experienced election rallies if you went to them.

4

I think thats a recent development by the GOP with them refusing to confirm a SCOTUS nominee or pass legislation because it’s an election year, thats not how it normally works.

IMO another bigger problem with the US system is that it allows there to be a President from one party while control of congress is with the opposition, inevitably creating deadlock. IMO it’s a crazy flawed system, it would make much more sense to just have both parties pick their candidates for President then the party which has most seats in congress gets their nominee as President.

5

Part of the problem is that limiting the time a candidate can begin campaigning would be limiting their free speech. How could you prevent someone from going around the country giving political speeches or using social media a year - two years - three years ahead of the election?

6

Where on Earth are you hearing that? I’ve never heard any American claiming we’re the only true democracy. Americans are more likely to complain that our government is broken.

7

Sure, but thats not necessary. Just run the primaries in a six week period July-August, have the conventions start of September, then two months to campaign for the General. If they can’t explain their message in two months I don’t think an extra two months will make a difference and two months or less is the norm for most other countries election cycles.

Sure they can campaign before that if they want, but presumably the media is not going to cover it much outside of primary season.

8

If the only way you experience American elections is through the media, you will get a very exaggerated sense of how long our “election cycle” is. It isn’t actually a big deal for normal people until quite late. (Trump has piqued more people’s interest early, but in a normal year the common wisdom is that people don’t pay attention until mid-September.)

9

This can’t be underestimated. There not only was no telephone or telegraph, there wasn’t even an organized postal system. Before the inauguration, you wanted to make sure word has gotten out about who was being inaugurated. Apparently, though, before the telegraph, it wasn’t uncommon for people in remote locations not to know who the president was until well into his first term.

Yeah. That’s not built into the system. It’s the GOP being butts.

Regarding the primaries and the length of the time it takes to do all the campaigning, voting, and getting to the conventions: a couple of decades ago, a few states decided to exaggerate their importance by being the early with their primaries. The reason Iowa is considered so important is that it is first. So people imagine it is predictive in some way, and also influential-- ie, “As Iowa goes, so goes the country.” I doubt there’s a bit of truth in it, but it would be very impolitic for a candidate to snub Iowa at this point. If there were a law restricting primaries to, say, the May before the election of later, states would still try to hold them on different days, in order for each to have its news day, and the candidates would try to rush to each state to speak at the primaries. They end up skipping states they felt were already likely to go to their opponent, or to go to the other party in the general election. Those ideas would become self-fulfilling prophecies, and voters who felt snubbed by a candidate would not vote for that candidate.

So it would actually mess with freedom of choice, to an extent. The conventions are not happening all that long before the election-- three months. Two would probably work.

But part of the answer is that the US is very big and has lots of people, and votes by state. The world sees only the presidential election, but not the many state elections going on at the same time-- although that’s really not my point-- the electoral college that has us voting by state, and not electing by popular vote actually prevents the tyranny of the majority, and remains necessary in this very large, very populous country.

We are not just a Democracy, we are a large Democracy. I know Canada is as well, land-wise, but Canada only has about 1/10 as many people as the US.

I realize India is a democracy with more than twice the US’s population, and managed to complete a national election in less than two months. But that brings us back to the early adoption problem. India became a modern democracy when it could benefit from other country’s experience. Plus, India is one unified country, not a collection of allied, but autonomous states, each with its own election laws.

Do we know it’s overly dramatic, and wish some of the drama would go way? Yes. Do we want to do so with laws or an amendment? No. Although, I wish there were some way to force the GOP legislators to do their fracking jobs right now.

10

Very simple: We LOVE the show! Sports and elections are the original reality television. As elections have evolved (and devolved in certain cases :wink: ), and sports continue to find a yearly champion, we are told and feel we are “on the team”. And hell if we aren’t. Voting is a fantastic and unpredictable thing. If you have doubts on that, the fiscally and religiously conservatives have elected Donald Trumpy Wumpy as their viable candidate. We wait for gaffes, we wait for idiocy, we wait for promises that can or cannot be passed as law…

… and it’s all on TV, and even more conveniently, the Internet, a base for any type of comment whatsoever. What’s not fun?

11

I would like to see all of the states have their primary elections on the same day. People would base their vote on who they want to win, and not be influenced by how many states a candidate already had. I’ve know people who wanted to vote for “the guy who is going to win” and would vote for the person ahead in the race for votes.

12

It would also help if the news networks would stop scheduling so many debates, and starting them so early. In the 1980 campaign the first Republican primary debate was in January 1980. This time the first debate was in August, six months before the NH primary. And there would be seven more before that primary, with more after. The press should cover the early campaigning, but there’s no reason (other than ratings and advertising $$) for them to be so actively involved so early.

13

It only takes a day, or maybe a few weeks if the vote is so close that detailed recounts are needed.

The rest is pure drama. Is *Anna Karenina *too long a book? Is Gone With the Wind too long a movie? (Well, ok, yes, but still …)

14

Does the OP honestly not understand the difference between a presidential and a parliamentary system of government? Seriously?

Every country with a presidential form of government takes a long time to nominate and elect the president. There is nothing at all unique about the United States in this respect.

15

We like the way that our elections drag out for so long that they are essentially never over. We may complain about the process occasionally.

The minute that Hillary or Trump is elected the focus will shift to the mid-term congressional elections and the importance of electing senators and representatives who will frustrate the agenda of the new president and keep her/him in check. A balance of power. We end up with neither side getting exactly what they want, no rapid change only marginal, watered down compromise, if that, maybe no progress at all.

Rapid positive feedback tends to make any system oscillate out of control. Negative feedback pulls down the highs and keeps the system in control. Our politics is always about slowing down the rate of change.

This is a very conservative country, even what we call the liberal side would not be seen as liberal in other parts of the world.

All of the election talk about what will be done is just that, talk. Very little of the ideas will come to fruition.

Relax.

16

But it IS a Federal Republic – only that, again due to the benefit of further experience, it was able to establish its own set of issues on which national uniformity should be the rule, as opposed to just accruing whatever way you do things in State X, Y, or Z over 200 years.
There’s also how its government system is a parliamentary democracy, based on the British model, where campaigns are short and parties have strong organizations.

17

Yeah. It’s mostly the media making a big horse race out of things, for the “excitement”, and dorks like us in this forum. Most Americans won’t even notice until after Labor Day.

American media is grossly distorting the picture.

18

It’s simply the nature of our system, which isn’t like any other. Most of the election is the primary, where candidates from the 2 parties vie with each other for the nomination. Notice how, once the RNC/DNC happens it’s only a few months before the general election?

Even that is longer than many countries elections, but then in most other countries you don’t elect a person, you are voting for a party…who then, if they have enough seats (or can combine with other parties to have enough seats) simply appoints a leader. Here, even in the primaries which are (in some states) voted on only by members of the party you are voting for a specific person…and each state has their own election in both the primaries AND in the general election. Also, you have to think of the US as 50 semi-autonomous entities who all do things differently and want to keep it that way. They all have slightly (or even radically) different methods of doing the primaries and the general. Then there are the parties themselves, who have changed the way THEY nominate a candidate (it used to be more autocratic, but these days they want to at least project the facade that ‘the people’ are making the choice wrt the candidate from each party)…and both do it differently, and there are subtle and not so subtle differences in each state wrt how the parties operate there.

In short, we have a system that is much like the human eye…it works, but it’s perhaps sub-optimal, and if you were to design it you’d never do it that way. But it evolved this way, and it’s worked well enough, and we are a strong enough country that there hasn’t really been any real call to change it by the majority of people. When and if it ever stops working well enough for that we probably will change it…but until then, why should we? We are used to it. Sort of like our health care system I guess.

19

Thank you to everyone who has responded thus far. It’s been very instructive; I have learned by reading your replies that the reasons for the length of your election process are quite varied and can’t be summed up in a simple sentence.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Your responses have made really interesting reading.

20

OK. Now you have to explain your name.