This is a great time to start anew and jumpstart our Monthly Topic! Remember, you don’t have to write an eloquent treatise – just a couple of simple sentences will do!
Would presidents be more effective if they were expected to be post-partisan upon taking office? In other words, if a person elected president was a Democrat or Republican, imagine upon taking office that s/he was no longer officially affiliated with a political party.
That would be rather Washingtonian, as George Washington denounced political parties, though ideologically he was a federalist. Similarly, the nation might know a president’s inclination to side with one party more than another, but officially, the president would be politically independent.
Would that be good or bad for our government?
POSTING/COMMENTING GUIDELINES
We encourage lively, thought-provoking discussions conducted with dignity and decorum. We reserve the right to remove any comments that are deemed abrasive and directed toward any member. No president is off limits, but we adhere to the longstanding tradition of refraining from fully evaluating presidents who have not been out of office for at least 20 years. While negative criticism of specific presidents is allowed, here’s what’s appropriate and what is not.
Appropriate: “I think President___________was an ineffective president because…”
Inappropriate: “President __________ was an idiot!”
This would be a good time to experiment with that. I mean, we have a president who can’t run again, so he’s got nothing to lose. This is not to get political about the current president, I’m just saying in general we need to do this when a president is in his (or her) second term so there’s no political fallout. Maybe even after midtern elections.
I’m not saying the current president (or any president) would really do this. But if it ever happened, maybe year six is a good time.
Thanks for starting the discussion, Roy! Ok everyone else, jump right in!
I think it would be great for the country, but it’s not realistic that it would happen in our two-party system. Maybe if we had five or six parties, a president might be tempted to rise above it all. But in this current duality, it’s highly unlikely that even an outside-the-box president would make such a move.