DCE over at WeekendPundit (who was one of the first to link us up during our fledgling opening) had this just great post, especially if you are just sick to death of all this campaigning. I thought this was great:
…Our father, a curmudgeonly fiscal conservative, alternated between amusement and despair whenever politics were discussed at dinner. He finally fell back in to the old standby of "when you can’t show ’em, shock ’em." One exchange that comes to mind quite clearly came when our sister and her live-in boyfriend of the time stopped by for dinner. My parents are not prudes so this was not an unusual thing, and they actually liked ‘Geoffrey’ a lot, despite his socialist take on the human condition.
That evening we were digging in to chicken parmigiana while Geoffrey waxed philosophical on the failure of government to effectively deal with poverty. Dad, never one to pass up a good straight line, began taking him to task over the multiple billions of dollars already spent to aid the poor. What did Geoffrey want to do, throw more good money after bad? Then Geoffrey made the mistake: he asked my father what he thought the government should do. My father looked him straight in the eyes and said,
"Just make me Emperor for two years. Give me complete control of society and in two years there won’t be any more poor people."
Looking for the entire world like a deer in the headlights of an on-rushing Mack truck Geoffrey asked him how that would happen.
"Simple: After two years the malingerers will have jobs and all the others will have starved."
Our dad is a nice guy. No, really!– he paid to have Geoffrey’s shirt cleaned after he spit a mouthful of chicken and marinara sauce all over himself.
That said, DCE has some unorthodox ideas of how we can get all of the money out of Washington, along with all of the professional politicians. Now, that would certainly take a lot of the fun away from us here at the ‘Grok but I think we’d survive (we live in such a target rich environment).
So, poverty down – on to the Federal Government!
First, Presidential Elections are irritating to no end. The heck with this Campaign Finance Reform stuff; let’s just do away with the election all together. Let the Senate elect the President and then he can appoint a Vice President with the approval of the House of Representatives. They’ll serve for six or seven years and then are replaced. We should also ease the rules for removing anyone who turns out to be a bum. This change accomplishes a couple of things: it removes the Presidential Election as a source of corruption, and it restores the proper perspective to the relationship between Congress and the Executive. The Imperial Presidency that most of us have grown up with is a holdover from the end of World War II where the President retained an inordinate amount of power due to the semi-state of war that existed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This was never the intent of the Founding Fathers who wanted most of the political power to be in the hands of Congress…
…One fine day, there is a knock on your door. There stand two Federal Marshals. One of them hands you a letter. "Congratulations!" the letter would read, "You have been chosen by the Selective Service Administration to serve your Congressional District as its Representative to the House for a period not to exceed three years." They give you five minutes to pack a small overnight bag, kiss the spouse and kids goodbye, and then bundle you off to do your duty.
Now, you may be just rolling your eyes, but just let your imagination go and….go read the whole thing!
