atvsamala

(extraneous material removed version)
The Fundamental Flaw of American Politics

There is something fundamentally wrong with the American process of electing a president. It’s that the candidates are running on platforms and espousing solutions that they know little about. And then we, the people, are voting on those ideas when we too know little about them.

Even if our candidates were Einstein’s, even an Einstein is an expert only in his chosen field, such as physics. He’s not an expert in economics; he’s not an expert in social development; he’s not an expert in immigration.

Why are we electing people who are running on a platform they are not experts at? And why does the entire country listen to their ideas and vote whether their good or not, when we neither are experts?

If you run a business and you are going to develop a new product, or you need to find a solution to a particular problem, you go out and you hire the best brains in that field. You then put them in a laboratory where they experiment, where they try many solutions, until they see what works. And then only do you implement it and build your business upon it.

We are not doing that. Rather, we are swayed by a charismatic person who has a good sounding idea that they can speak persuasively about. The ideas sound good; but they’re not necessarily the best ideas. They haven’t been tried it in the laboratory of experience. And then we’re electing that candidate and their idea and immediately committing our national course of action to it. This is wrong. This is flawed. This is a recipe for mistakes on a colossal scale.

What we need to do is instead of electing a president based on a platform, we need to elect a president who says, “I will elicit the best minds of the country. I will draw upon the brainpool, the immense intelligence that’s there in the American people, to find the best ideas. Then, I will find a way of experimentation, a laboratory of trial and error, to try these ideas. And only then will we commit the nation to them”.

This is a fundamentally different approach to the American presidency and to leadership in general. Now the American president is not the leader touting a platform. Rather they are an executive managing resources, finding brainpower and creating experimentation. Then, when solutions emerge and are proven, they become an executive in the fullest sense of that word, meaning they execute upon the direction that has been chosen. They manage it, they implement it, they build it, but they don’t come up with it on their own.


We need to tap the brainpower of the American people. We need to find a mechanism of communication and dialogue where the best ideas rise to the top. And even the experts don’t always have the right answers. Sometimes the best ideas come out of left field, from unexpected sources; from the young guy in the mailroom who seems to knows nothing but has a fresh perspective, has an insight.

We need to elicit the experts, and we need to elicit more; we need to elicit the creative intelligence and spirit of the American people far and wide, educated and uneducated, experienced and inexperienced. And even wider, we may need to tap, we should tap, the brainpower of the world, for many of our problems have effects and causes that are worldwide. Many of “our” problems, such as the immigration problem, have their roots in other countries. We need to look for solutions there too.

And then we need to experiment upon these ideas in relative zones of safety to see if the solutions really work. Only then we should act. What we are doing now in electing a president is not only dangerous, but it’s stupid. We have all bought in to a collective decision making process that is flawed, that is wrong, and is recipe for making wrong decisions.

Lets wake up from this illusion. Lets get smart. Lets use the smarts of the entire nation. Great things are possible when we all put our heads together.

Kabir Jaffe
Essence Training Institute
kabir@iucis.edu

bhkad

Henry Ford could not build a car on his own, his genius was in assembling the groups of people who could build cars and then the people who could build the systems to build cars and working to help them make cars as efficiently as possible.

A president's talent is revealed by how he decides.

It certainly helps to have someone who has world class persoanl education, skills and experience in a useful area of governance, but the best and the brightest of this nation's experts in every field are usually available to the president and it is up to him or her to decide which experts to choose.

In the case of Mitt Romney, who earned his J.D. and his MBA from Harvard and who founded a billion dollar company after turning around the bankrupt SLC Olympic Games we have a candidate with real world experience and real world class executive and financial skills.

The premise of the OP is a good one but some of the assumptions are incorrect.

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But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060508.php3

Dragonfly

As opposed to the current two term president that all but bankrupted every business he ever owned, and has now increased the American debt to well over 9 trillion dollars....

TOJ

Did I miss it when they changed the Constitution and Bush can now run for another term?

Maximus Zeebra

Thank you for a very enlightened post(for once there is one). I agree with you in most things, but a few issues are there..

1. The current administration have managed to force their limited brains onto the American people, in that process reducing what you call the collected American intelligence, is greatly reduced, and distorted(into) if not always thinking from a perspective of the brainwashing forced onto that population the last 5-8 years.

This would make the creative intelligence, and collected intelligence always looking at things from a distorted point of view(terrorism, war on terror etc). I think you idea is great, and I do believe it to be what has been going on in Europe the last decades. Our governments have now "outsourced" many of the larger tasks and tasks they cannot solve to the European Union technocracy. The European Union government layer on top of the national one is a new type of government, ever evolving to the rapidly changing new realities of this world. A government of politicians with massive teams of experts surrounding them, a government who split the points of interests into groups of people who have knowledge about the correct issues.

I think the European Union is great, but has not evolved far enough, especially concerning free creativity and input from every corner of the people.. Still its looking positive.

Two things need to change in America to make the things you talk about happen. First of all, the people need a massive program to undo all the brainwashing since 911.. Then the American model of politics MUST change into something more evolving than the old government model you have at the moment. Your governments failure is symbolized by the hundreds of years old buildings it resides in, and the old gray skinned man way of doing things that are still going on..

It can change, and I hope it will, or else America will head into a dark age of ignorance, flawed thinking, and more ignorance.



Ps. Have you seen the way the US politicians brainwash people. Using the worlds "terrorism", "death" and "disaster", "911" etc all the time, while moving their hands like they are shaking a baby or hammering something. Its scary for most people. On the other hand they use opposite psychology by saying they are doing the right things(while they really do the opposite). But hey, humans are fragile and often stupid.

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I am just waiting for some American to pick apart my 5000 word reasoning, by a slight spelling mistake in a sentence, to prove why I am wrong, and he is right.

American politics, knowledge acquired by the people.

TurtleDude

a bit moonbatty there buddy but the fact is

1) in the NEw Deal era the DEMOCRATIC party started a massive entitlement program that

a) created a disregard for the tenth amendment

b) created millions of people who became addicted to government entitlements

c) appointed judges who cemented this nonsense into the laws of the land

2) this was accentuated by LBJ

what that means is that any candidate who runs against these unconstitutional entitlements runs the risk of alienating several generations of entitlement addicts that the dems created. Sadly, Bush was not courageous enough to start weaning these people off this narcotic but rather pandered to it.

BTW someone who allegedly has failed in business sure was able to get almost all his business partners to heavily support him. The sad fact is, neither of the two remaining dems have any executive experience and McCain has more experience-in every relevant area than BHO and Mrs Bill Clinton combined

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UtahBill

Isn't McCain just an extension of Bush?

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The Age of Reason doesn't have to be a thing of the past.
Being judgemental is the prime directive of some evangelicals.
No success can compensate for failure in the home.

Dragonfly

I never said anything about Bush running for a third term.

The point I was trying to make was simple.

Flawed system. (tread title paraphrase)

Supposedly giving the job to somebody who's an expert at running things successfully.

Bush, who fvkced up almost everything he touched for decades on end.

Bush elected twice. (not that the Dems provided anyone better for the job at the time)

Flawed system? Flawed system.

It's kinda like domino's isn't it?
Start one falling, and the rest just follow with no extra effort.

Mach

I more side with you on this, except for that last part that I'd personally clarify.

A president's talent is revealed by what he accomplishes.
Bush is a dumb decider, but is a good accomplisher (do-er).

Bush has said he decides if someone's position is good or not by how confident they sell him on it. That's it. Basically he uses his gut.
I believe that's a poor way to decide on policy for the country. For an interview of an entry-level person at a company, sure, use your gut, it's probably best. But for an executive level position? Man, you psychologically profile them, you test them, you check references, you want to know more about their predicited future success than even they themselves know.

I believe Bush was elected because he, and his goals, appealed to a majority...well, enough of the right people to get him elected. He his POLITICALLY smart, and powerful, which IS a good resume. Further, he and Cheney delivered BIG to their base, immeediately. They revised energy policy immediately, they got us into war, and they cut taxes. No doubt this isn't popular, but they didn't do it for popularity, they did it because it helps their base/supporters, which to them was the right thing to do. Every time a leader does something that helps the minority, it hurts the majority, they know this, but they won the power and did what they needed for their minority, who ultimately was able to convince enough people to side with them (even if it didn't benefit them!).

Bush needs no defending, he already won his spot as presidenty for two terms, and greatly helped is core constiuency (not the fundy christians so much). And all that from somone who doesn't like Bush as president.

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

chevydriver1123

I have a feeling that in the next 20 years that are politics will be like Europe and the President will have to build collation governments in order to lead the country.

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My political blog; http://libertarianblue.blogspot.com/


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