If you are trying to keep up with the national news right now, it may seem like this country of ours is sort of like that unguided robot vacuum cleaner. You know, the one that slowly moves around the room bumping into everything, making a lot of noise, and stirring up dust before it backs up and heads off in another direction for another collision. It’s a little scary to consider that analogy, and maybe it’s a little extreme, but most recent surveys show that nearly 70% of the people in the United States say they are not confident about the direction that this country is headed. You have to ask, who’s doing the driving and how did we get to this point? Those are scary thoughts. While polling questions can be structured to slant the results, the bottom-line takeaway from a sampling of favorability surveys since January 15, 2024, is that a big chunk of the 162 million registered voters are not at all inspired or excited about voting for either one of the two likely candidates running for President. Between 55 to 65 percent of surveyed registered voters say they would not be satisfied with either Biden or Trump as President for another four years. The answer to how we got here is found, in part, by looking at the evolution and the political power of the two major parties: Democrat and Republican. Those two parties started out as the Federalist party (now Republican) and the Democratic-Republican party (now Democrat). When General George Washington decided he would not serve a third term as President, he made no secret of his greatest fear for the new nation. It wasn’t domestic terrorism, and it sure wasn’t climate change. Washington forcefully cautioned against the threat of the power and influence of political parties. In the election of 1796, that threat took shape as those two cabals dug in and immediately started fighting and regimenting ideology. Two hundred and twenty-eight years later, after the 12th Amendment and numerous electoral readjustments and interpretive judicial battles, this country still struggles with exactly how it elects its national leaders. As far as the Democrat and Republican party officials are concerned, they consider it their right and responsibility to select their “favored candidate” and anoint him or her as the party “flag bearer”, and they, along with the major “super-donors” of campaign contributors, determine who should be our next President, Vice President, Senators, and Representatives. This is done with an eye toward who is most likely to please electors rather than who is most qualified to serve. So much for transparency and the public’s right to choose. We have only to look at the Republi-can Primaries now going on for the nominee for President to see the failings of what this sys-tem has become. After only two state primaries, the National Republican Conference has all but closed the nominating process, pre-emptively making its choice and denying all other candidates and all other state primaries any opportunity to have a fair and unfettered voice in the race. In a time when the list of crisis situations faced by this country calls desperately for the very best leadership we can find, we are instead offered candidates for the highest of-fice in the land that are compromised, physically challenged and simply not competent. Un-fortunately, like so many other things in Washington, D.C. the relatively simple and straight-forward concept of running for office and determining a winner has now become one more thing with the same appeal as watching sausage being made. General Washington, sir, once again you did not tell a lie. You were correct in your prediction, and our most important right, the right to a vote and a voice is at stake.
