What's best for the Democracy?

[proggrrl]

I've been watching the presidential primaries with only a mild interest so far. The horserace coverage of primaries is not of interest to me for the most part - especially now that I'm a registered Independent.

But today I stumbled upon two N.Y. Times editorials that very much encapsulate what has been bouncing around my head this season. In particular, the second piece, is of great concern to me. Pretty nifty to find these things in the paper and shareable. Curious what the flist thinks...I know there are a ton of Obama fans out there...


THE KENNEDY MYSTIQUE:

Something fundamental has shifted in the Democratic Party.

...A throng of Kennedys came to the Bender Arena at American University in Washington to endorse Obama. ...The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.

THE DYNASTIC QUESTION:

Does it diminish American democracy if we keep the presidency in the same two families that have held it since 1989?

...We Americans snicker patronizingly as “democratic” Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, India and Argentina hand over power to a wife or child of a former leader. Yet I can’t find any example of even the most rinky-dink “democracy” confining power continuously for seven terms over 28 years to four people from two families. (And that’s not counting George H.W. Bush’s eight years as vice president.)

...Yet we have faced this trade-off frequently over the last 215 years and regularly inclined on the side of fresh blood.

...As Thomas Jefferson put it: “in no office can rotation be more expedient” than in the presidency.

Comments

[cordwainer.livejournal.com]

Those are both great columns in the NY Times. I think I pretty much agree with both. (And I don't often find myself agreeing with David Brooks, but in that essay I think he captured the feeling perfectly.)

Kristof poses a good question. We have the 22nd amendment for a reason. Bill Clinton's strange antics the last several weeks didn't do any good for him, his wife, the party, or the country. If anything he only proved why we need the 22nd amendment.

28 years of two political families running things isn't good for democracy.

[brokenmnemonic.livejournal.com]

I always find it faintly amusing when George W and others go on about democracy and the US... because your country isn't a democracy, it's a republic. The common people don't make decisions, they elect people to represent them and then empower them to make those decisions.

Ironically enough, Plato's Democracy doesn't advocate democracy; it indicates that Plato believed Democracy was unworkable beyond small village scale, and ends up favouring some sort of benevolant oligarchy, I think. I'm a tad rusy, and helly_uk is good at correcting me when I get it wrong.

The war of independence didn't start as an objection to the monarchy, it was a protest about the unfairness of certain taxes. I think people tend to forget that. Everyone has the dream that their country will be the product of an organised meritocracy where everyone will rise to the level their ability allows, but the reality is that money and influence decide everything.

Stopping someone from the Kennedy or Bush family from being president because of their family rather than because of who they are is a bad thing. Equally, making them president because of who they are is a bad thing. What American needs isn't a politician as president, but a statesman - someone who's prepared to argue over what's wrong and right and work for an agenda that looks further ahead than just 2 years. The world stage needs someone with a strong attitude, but not the bully in the schoolground attitude your most recent president has had. From my point of view, those matters outweigh anything on the family front.

Personally, I like Obama for the same reason my father does - he strikes me as the sort of person who'd put an individual like Roberto Mendoza (from the west wing) into the Supreme Court. That alone is enough to make him promising :P

i partially argee

[ptbvisiongrrl.livejournal.com]

I believe that the problem with the US is the fact that we elect politicians, not "statesmen," because the majority of people either don't see beyond the end of their nose, or don't care. Or, what's even worse, are too stupid to see the difference between what is right for the country and what SOUNDS right. Personally, I am finding myself quite uncaring about this election, because I just don't see anyone making it to the final ticket that is particularly different from another, surface differences of color and sex be damned. For the first time in my almost twenty years of voting life, I have no clue who I am voting for. The saddest part is that I am a high school Civics teacher, trying to get a bunch of teenagers to care about something most of them won't even be able to vote in, and I'm this disinterested.