by Mr. Jay L.

Created on: April 16, 2008

Our modern executive branch organization is a failure.

A single party in control of the Executive Branch forwards policies based on a party line; once the policy reaches Congress it faces the challenge of navigating a minefield of party line agendas and voting. Between committee rewrites and filibusters, initiatives that may actually accomplish something of value end up costing taxpayers thousands, if not millions, of dollars and lost time; the bill is either killed or rewritten to add pork barrel spending addendum's.

Why is this? Because the minority party in Congress does not want the policies of the opposing party to take complete dominance.

This begs the question, how do we resolve the problem? Very simply, by doing away with allowing the Presidential nominee selecting his running mate. Instead, following the General Election in November, one of the candidates is selected as President; his opponent from the opposing party is appointed as his Vice President.

This is not unreasonable; in fact, this is how it used to be done in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries.

Why should this be the case now, though? Quite simply, it would bring a more balanced perspective on American domestic and foreign policy to the Executive Branch, a perspective that would better reflect the goals of the American people. Such an arrangement would force the President and Vice President to bring both their perspectives to a potential bill; through negotiation each would be able to get some of their ideas into a proposed law, rather than one side trying to force its opinion down the collective throat of the Legislative Branch.

A bill from a bi-partisan Executive Branch would likely have a better chance of clearing our bi-partisan, bi-cambrial Legislative Branch with less delay, less modification, and less chance of of being killed entirely. This would save the government from wasted time, and save the taxpayer untold millions in wasted tax money.

It all boils down to this: successful government is about successful negotiation and compromise.

What seems to have escaped the American people - and our government - is that we have a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. The reality is that we have an elitist oligarchy: government of the people, by a select few, for everyone's own good.

It's time to take a broken system and fix it.

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