I received a DM asking for me to elaborate on my post. The response was too long to reply with via the messaging system, so I’m just going to put it here:
Fundamentally, the people aren’t very good at putting in the work to figure out what makes good policy, nor are they very good at electing the most honest and trustworthy in an election, instead of just the person that does the best sales job. Fundamentally, most people aren’t aware of what the issues actually are, what the available solutions are, and what the tradeoffs are for any one approach. They tend to believe that there must be simple, perfect answers that will completely solve any problem, and certainly its just lobbyists and corruption preventing all of this from happening. And certainly, there’s no case where what I believe is an issue is actually a feature or a tradeoff against worse options.
The people were not, to begin with, really intended to elect their leaders on the basis of policy. Instead, the idea was that they would elect individuals who were well-known through town as a respectable and intelligent man. (Population sizes were smaller back when the country began, and industrious men tended to raise to local prominence for their work to help build the growing colonies.) That individual was expected to go and learn the intricacies of policy and represent his electorate as though they all had equal knowledge of all of the quirks, considerations, and tradeoffs.
If that is how we elected our representatives, then I think that the country would be in an improved space, but ultimately it is not how elections work. The people try to elect people on the basis of policy, despite having no real understanding of the options or even what the real issues at hand are.
What you really need, to find a good politician, is a group of people who are aware of the issues at hand and who know the candidates well enough to be able to say whether that individual has the ability to perform the job admirably.
The political parties enable this at the lower levels by picking candidates who seem less crazy to back in local elections. Party heads actually sit down and interview the people who are interested in running and try to pick the best available. (Though, they are still limited by who all is interested in running - which might not be a great selection.)
In a parliamentary system, you add onto this by then taking those people who have been chosen by the party and elected by the people, has them select one from among their own, and place him in the lead. This is the very embodiment of having an enlightened body of people, who understand the issues and the candidates, electing a person.
In our Presidential system, we have approximated this through the primary system (in fact, now that I think about it, I am curious if there is a historical tie in between the word “Prime” in “Prime Minister” and the “primaries”…). The parties each select a candidate from among themselves that they would want as their leader, and proffer them to the American public to decide from.
But, whereas the PM is selected from among the elected officials by the elected officials, the primary system is not (in modern day) as locked down as that. Pretty much any idiot who is registered with the party can run, and any idiot who is registered with the party can vote for them. Populist sentiments have opened up the primaries to the general public over the years, and so lowered the quality of the candidates (particularly on the Republican side).
Now…let’s take a step aside onto a tangent for a moment.
It’s likely that the reason for the primaries to be so open to the general public is due to a general concern on the part of the public about “backroom deals”. As I noted up at the beginning, the general public tends to view the government as a large, corrupt organization and politicians as immoral, lying swines. And, historically, that hasn’t been completely unfounded. The parties have set up political machines to maintain power in areas, largely for the purpose of self-enrichment by those in the party. A strong component of such systems is the ability to organize things like the mafia, where you get promoted by performing favors for those above you and kicking strong earnings upstairs. You rise through the ladder based on metrics that are internal to the machine, rather than based on what you have done for your electorate.
Consequently, over the ages demands for greater accountability - keeping records, making those records public, opening elections to the general public, enfranchising more voters, etc. - have helped to break up such ability for rampant corruption and criminal government.
While the general populace likes to elect liars who will tell them what they want to hear, they actually expect those people to go forward and do all the things they promised - despite it all having been a bunch of blarney and ill-considered simplifications. The populace doesn’t accept the concept that they’re lousy at selecting trustworthy candidates, because then they’d have to vote for boring milquetoasts that just spout facts and figures. But, still, populist sentiment does keep government clean of overt corruption.
For lower offices, the people don’t care too much and so they allow the party heads to simply select candidates. At the top, though, they demand a more open system.
So when it comes to the Presidency, the parties have a bit of a pickle. They have to choose between running their preferred candidate based on their knowledge of the candidate and policy, and likely lose the election because that person isn’t necessarily the most thrilling personality, or run someone who will win the popular election, and then hope that the person doesn’t cause too much havoc in the White House.
Which runs into another question, how necessary is the leadership position?
In Japan, for example, the LDP usually just selects some idiot to be the PM, rather than really select the person that who leads them, because it gives the party a great fall guy. Current plans not working? Fine, drop the PM and change tact, ignoring the fact that current policy had nothing to do with who the Prime Minister was.
One suspects that the logic of hiring GW Bush and Donald Trump ran along these lines. Easier to just mark the Presidency as a loss and put some likable idiot in the roll, who is at least on your side, than try and force a reasonable and intelligent person down the craw of the American public. (The RNC could have kept Cruz or someone in the running, through the latter half of the primaries, after the other candidates who were splitting the “sane” vote had dropped out, for example.) You just run the government out of the legislature, using an internally selected leadership hierarchy, and rely on the cabinet picks and VP to keep things in order in the White House.
And while this system isn’t necessarily horrible, personally, I think that a real, publicly recognized leader is better than a shadow leader. Too often there is no true “shadow leader”, it’s just a cabinet of old men ruling by committee and, while safe and dependable, committees just aren’t very dynamic or forward thinking.
Even a good leader is, most of the time, just rubber stamping the decisions of his direct underlings - each of whom specialize in their area of oversight. And so even an idiot can, in end effect, turn out not being too bad a President so long as the cabinet is packed with reasonable people. Trump’s abilities as a President, for example, have significantly improved as people like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Keith Schiller, etc. have been forced out.
But an intelligent and reasonable leader can set up grander designs and actually change things in a fundamental way. He can issue a vision to the general public and guide the country along a more elaborate path.
Personally, I would prefer a nation with a leader who is more in the mold of a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Elon Musk - with some vision and a particular twist on their approach. Ultimately, I would like to see the country being differentiated from other nations, rather than just be the umpteenth nation doing all the same things as everyone else.
But particularly in the modern day, where you have countries like Russia and China trying to outmaneuver the democratic governments, and push the concept that single-party, authoritarian rule is more capable, maintainable, and efficient, it has the potential to greatly affect the future prospects of large bodies of humanity across the world, in Africa, South America, and Asia as those governments continue to adapt and stabilize. While democratic government isn’t so awful as that, it is true that headless government that is overly constrained to moves that play well in the press, and has to reveal practically every thing it is doing and every conversation in public, really can’t compete.
The main advantage that the US and Europe have is a lead in technology. China and Russia are all too happy to simply swoop in and steal all of it, sparing themselves the R&D time. We also have an advantage in financial power, but China’s sheer population size has made it competitive on that front.
Russia and China, on the other hand, fall behind due to corruption. Corrupt economies and governments have a built in inefficiency because you have to grease hands at every level, and it’s difficult to oversee that, to make sure that the tasks are being given the desired priority. In general, you have to focus on one thing at a time, making it well and popularly known, so that everyone knows which palms need to be greased the most. Nuanced breakouts of spending don’t work.
Still you can’t depend on that.
Ultimately, it is better if the democratic countries at least have real leaders that are capable and visionary individuals, with true power to lead their governments.
Now going back to the original discussion, my concern is that as the popular election becomes even more attractive to the general populace (even if only by compulsion), then the pressure on the parties to put forward likable idiots in the primaries, and move the reins of power more deeply into the Legislature, will just grow even further. To be sure, they could simply lock up the primaries more, so that it goes back more to the backroom deal sort of situation, but I don’t find that likely. The party which chose not to do that would have a distinct advantage over the other party for the Presidency and ultimately, you do need that guy in there to rubber stamp your legislation.
So while I’m already pretty on the edge about the current primary system, I’d really think that we’re in trouble if we made voting compulsory.
Moving to a parliamentary system isn’t my favorite option, but it’s a fairly easy solution to the problem. Obviously, the ruling party might still just choose to put an easily manipulated simpleton into the White House, to rubber stamp whatever Congress gives them. But, at least in times of crisis, they can install a person that is up to the task.