US Electoral Processes

Its beginning to look as thought Pres. Barack Obama will win November's US Presidential elections. The Republican opposition is seemingly hopelessly split between the possibly electable but flawed Mitt Romney, and the equally flawed, but probably unelectable (and last champion of the far right), Newt Gingrich.

In the latest round of voting for the Republican ticket in South Carolina, the primary winner was Newt Gingrich, who convincingly beat Mitt Romney in a spate of negative campaigning, and the scene is now apparently set for a long, hard, and bloody fight this spring. It seems unlikely that the winner of this will be in any state to seriously challenge Obama, who will even have been shown all his opponents weaknesses. Unless there's a serious downtown in the US economy and employment figures, then the general easing of the recession and 'green shoots' of recovery will also be in the incumbents favour.

US Presidential Contestants 2012

I am by and large a big admirer of the USA and its institutions, but I think that the process of electing a US President is hopelessly archaic and actually damages democracy there:

• It occupies the top politicians of the worlds most powerful democracy for up to two years out of every four, and 
• Allows for absolutely no long-term policies to be put in place.

Even at the end of the process, the President may only have two years in which to try and 'bribe' the Congress and Senate into backing a few major pieces of legislation before the regime becomes paralysed by local politics (often governed by 'pork barrel' considerations). In some cases, the President may be hog tied from the start if his party fails to control either house.

I understand that historically this system was meant to encourage consensus politics and national polices arrived at via negotiation, but increasingly in the US, the politics has become confrontational, with both parties unwilling to give any concession to the other. This leaves the executive in deadlock for long periods, or for bad legislation being passed through, which is worse than no legislation at all.

I have no idea what would cause the US to consider amending the political process, but its obvious that after two hundred years, the current system is not really fit for the 21st century and needs at least a major overhaul, if not a complete replacement.

Maybe the economic, military, and political challenge posed by the Chinese in this century may act as a spur. The Chinese are playing a long game of decades, or even centuries in order to gain their geopolitical goals, while US policy is only consistent for four or five years.

In the long-term there will only ever be one winner in that contest unless the US can start setting long-term economic , foreign and domestic political goals.