Neil Gaiman, a British comic book writer and novelist who lives in California and is generally a witty fellow, has an interesting idea on how to reform the whole political system:
I think that some country or other ought to try jury duty as a way of picking its politicians: if your name gets picked, and you can’t come up with a good enough excuse, you’ll have to give up four or five years of your life to helping run the country, which avoids the main problem of politics as I see it, which is that the kind of people you have to choose between and vote for are the kind of people who actually think that they ought to be running things.
What do you have to do to get people interested in seriously studying a proposal like this?
Jas, I think I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. Although this initially seems like a good idea, I could image things getting even more corrupted than we currently have. First off, people hate jury duty which only last a week or so. If they would lie to get out of jury duty, what would they do to get out of a 4-5 year political duty? Or if they are getting paid to do political duty, what kind of bribes would they take for someone else to “analyze” complex bills and tell them how to vote while the “work” on the beach. I imagine something like “Runaway Jury” type corruption on genetically enhanced super-steroids. People are generally stupid and easily swayed by whatever they are told regardless of how stupid it is–the most recent election is a perfect example or any fad (if we are trying to avoid confrontations)–pet rocks–pleaaaaaaaaze it boggles the mind to think that anyone bought these, Aktins diet–duuuuhhh like any sane person could rationally think that only eating meat is going to be a healthy lifestyle, “cigarettes are cool”…I don’t think I need to go on.
At least in the current system, the politicians want to stay in and have to be occasional re-elected. The press will report anything that is too out of line that they learn about. Since the average person would be trying to get out of political service, they would have little incentive to behave or “work” in a responsible manner.
PS I think term limitations would be the easiest measure to improve things. No one should be in a powerful possition for more than about 10 years.
You’re right, this idea is pretty impractical. I was only about half-serious when I posted it. I think the biggest obstacle to this system would be the fact that running the government is actually far more complicated than most people realize, and the average joe who complains that movies are too long if they’re over 90 minutes is not going to want to read something as complex as a budget proposal (our current elected officials don’t even bother doing that!)
I just wish there was a way to start a rational discussion about the problems of our current system. I don’t know that we need to demolish the electoral college, but I do think it needs to be tweaked somehow.
I’d also love to see meaningful term limits put into place, but I doubt it will ever happen since the very people who would be restricted by them are the same ones who would have to create them. I don’t see Orrin Hatch voting himself out of a cushy job anytime soon…