I completely agree. The elected officials only slow things down.
My wife works for the US Federal Govt (bias alert!). Part of why they are so efficient, IMO, is because they are strictly not allowed to show political/ideological partisanship within the context of their jobs, which leaves them with nothing to do but focus on their jobs. She doesn’t need to focus on re-election. She is subject to termination for the same reasons a private sector worker would be, and is also subject to advancement for the same reasons. Imagine if Congress was like that.
Based on what she tells me about work, it sounds no different from a typical large company.
With respect to climate change, one party doesn’t even believe that it’s happening.
And in the other two cases, liberals and conservatives see entirely different problems that can incidentally be given the same superficial label.
What’s the problem with illegal immigration? Conservatives believe it’s too many of the wrong sort worming their way into our society. Liberals believe the problem is that there’s not a legal way for these millions of people to become contributing members of our society. Those are not the same problem.
Similarly with oil, although the difference here feels almost more like climate change. The reality-based community notes the fact that automobile and air transportation is almost entirely petroleum-fueled, sees the dearth of discoveries of major new oil fields and the increased wealth of the billions in India and China creating all sorts of new demand for cars (hence oil), and concludes that (a) oil shortages are inexorable, and (b) we might should expand our rail transportation options, since rail doesn’t need petroleum. The Republicans are (as recent gubernatorial decisions demonstrate) opposed to rail with a near-religious fervor, and basically see any oil crunch as a transitory and ephemeral problem that can be addressed through domestic drilling.
So the left and right see completely different and contradictory problems, albeit with the same name. Again, one has to conclude which problem is real and which is an illusion, and either conclusion loses one side of the political spectrum.
I’ll give you climate change, I guess, but I disagree with the other two examples. The problem with illegal immigration that both sides agree on is that too many people are in the country who don’t have the legal right to be there, and they differ on the solution; the conservative solution being making it harder to illegally enter and increasing efforts to deport the illegal immigrants already here, and the liberal solution to make it easier to legally enter and become legal residents.
With the oil, the problem is that we’re overly dependent on foreign oil sources in politically unstable countries, and the solutions there are to increase domestic production and decrease our general dependence on oil. But the differences are differences in solutions, or in priorities.
And I don’t think the Republican opposition to rail is because they feel that it’s bad to decrease dependence on petroleum. I think their argument is that rail is a generally inefficient method of transportation. So it’s not that they’d say we shouldn’t try to decrease oil dependence, but that increasing rail transportation is a bad way to do it.
Why must there be? It’s precisely because the current political parties will not change that they are so out of tune with what voters actually want. All you really need is a ranking system and a built in ability to change beliefs based on what the people in your party want.
And I did notice an overarching philosophy: take anything the other parties believe, and pick something in the middle. It pretty much seems to be saying “moderation is always good” or “Always pick a third option.” Their entire platform seems to be Extremism is bad.
Unfortunately, that means their party depends on being a third party.
Because we need to be able to predict, to some extent, what they will do when they get into office and can’t keep all their promises. It happens every time: The party makes promises in the campaign, they get into office, and they find out that their political capital is insufficient to get everything they promised. They need to compromise, and we need to know what they’ll compromise. Overarching philosophies are the only way to do it with a new party. (Old parties have decades of precedent, often embodied in individual politicians.)
There’s an old idea out there that, during the Civil Rights Era, MLK got better results when the debate was framed with the Segregationists on one end and Malcolm X on the other, as opposed to the Segregationists on one end and King on the other. Why? In the second scenario, King is the extremist and the middle path is a gradual reduction of Jim Crow. In the first, Malcolm X is the Scary Black Man extremist and King’s plan of an immediate end to Jim Crow sounds a lot more moderate than, you know, Kill Whitey.
That’s called the fallacy of the mean, and it’s absolutely rife in politics whenever lazy thinking takes hold. It’s why framing is so important.
I don’t trust a party based on the fallacy of the mean. It indicates it’s a party run by, or for, idiots.
That’s just semantics. “[T]oo many people are in the country who don’t have the legal right to be there” isn’t a problem in and of itself. The parties see two different solutions because their answers to “what exactly is the problem created by having a lot of Hispanics in the U.S. without legal authorization?” are vastly different.
The problem I have with this is the sheer lack of reality behind the ‘increase domestic production’ solution. There just isn’t enough untapped oil in the U.S. or its waters to make very much difference in world oil prices, let alone reduce our dependence on oil located in unstable countries. (Are there any serious analysts who claim otherwise?)
So the GOP position really seems to amount to “we’re not taking this problem seriously, but it’s a great lever to get some goodies for our friends in the oil bidness.” Accordingly, I’d have to put this in the category of one party regarding this as a problem, and the other not doing so.
Derleth has already addressed some of the problems with that approach. Main thing I’d reiterate is there are a whole bunch of issues where one party sees a problem, and the other party doesn’t. It’s like finding the middle position where one spouse wants to have kids, and the other doesn’t.
Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, Greens, Socialists, Teabaggers… 6 parties sound about perfect for a parliament. Throw in some tiny fringe movement like Scientology or the KKK which may or may not get a mandate. That would be an interesting election. The regular “Pepsi or Coke?” elections are boring and not very democratic.
Liberals, Conservatives, Progressives, Enviromentalists, Socialists and Reactionaries. Now you have a political smorgasbord.
The problem with ideologies is that they can cause people to believe things that are not true. Those on the right disregard evidence in favor of global warming. Those on the left disregard evidence that IQ is largely determined by genetics, and that it matters enormously. Those on the right do not want to be told about corporate chicanery. Those on the left do not want to be told about black crime. The list goes on and on.
Nevertheless, before I vote for someone I want to know what the person’s basic political principles are, and which choice the person will make when there are no easy choices.
Whig Party-Mild Libertarian
Populist Party-Social conservative, economic protectionist
Republican Party-About the same as now
Democratic Party-About the same as now
Progressive Party-Progressive, European-style liberals (probably including Greens too)
Libertarian party-Self-explnatory
Not quite complete without a Socialist Party, but I wonder if there are enough socialists in America to make up one that matters; they might as well work within the Progressives.
One point: At present, (one could make a strong case that) both major parties are the parties of Big Business. Nevertheless, each is a big-tent party including many elements with their own agendas not necessarily compatible with big biz. (Even Libertarians, moderate and extreme, are anti-biz to the extent they opposed government subsidies, protectionism, and sweetheart contracts to established business interests.) The above party configuration . . . separates out those elements, leaving the GOP and the Democrats as the parties of big biz and very little else. Depending. “Big Unions,” if one can still speak of such a thing, might find their voice in the remnant of the Democrats or in the Progressives. If the latter, the Dems and the GOP might actually merge, and if they don’t they will work together in Congress as if they have.