Parties suck

So I'm trying to get psyched about the next election. After all, the world's most powerful position (elected or otherwise) is up for grabs in a matter of months. In addition, there’s far too much global unrest and uncertainty. One would think they'd have a pretty stringent set of standards for selecting such a person. You know, the old "may the best man win" philosophy. But alas, I think this is wishful thinking. Maybe I need to tone down the enthusiasm.

The behavior you reward is the behavior you get --and our system of electing the President of the United States rewards some pretty shoddy behavior. The reason is that the opposing party (be it Democratic or GOP) is the only group that chooses who is to run against the incumbent. Democratic voters or Republican voters only represent a fraction of the country, and I believe this is a formula for disaster.

Case in point: Howard Dean. By pandering to a fraction of Democrats, he was almost able to win the Democratic ticket. In his peak, Dean supporters represented a fraction of a fraction of the general population -probably less than 15%. Should this tiny group of people really be the ones to determine an opponent for Bush? No way!

Republicans were having a field day because they knew such a marginal candidate could never take office in 2004. It wasn't till the 11th hour that Democratic voters finally seemed to figure this out, so eventually they chose to go with Kerry --no Dean, but still a very liberal Democrat.

So now Bush has these terrible approval ratings --barely above 40%, but Kerry still is having a very difficult time moving up in the polls. I think it's because Kerry is only an attractive alternative to Bush if you're a hardcore left winger. Kerry just isn’t a big hit among moderates and independents.

So here's the answer: Political parties need to rally behind and endorse people that have the best chance to win an election. Popularity amongst one’s own party should be next to worthless. Yes, it's important to find a candidate that embraces their party’s ideals. However, political parties only need to ask themselves two things:

1) Can we rally behind this guy (or does he embrace our ideals well enough)? If no, the candidate is out. If yes, then that candidate is thrown in with a small pool of other candidates.

2) Of all these candidates, who is the one most likely to win the GENERAL election.

This method would be win win. Parties would rally behind their candidate most likely to win, and it would automatically force parties to produce a more moderate candidate. This would produce a candidate that takes the general population to heart.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Democrats could have picked a much stronger candidate to run against Bush. Too bad the status quo, won’t allow for it.