American Political Term Limits

[lord_carbo]

Re: American Political Term Limits

Having only 2 candidates decreases the likelihood of one being chosen for an arbitrary reason.

Because votes are not two dimensional--politicians behind party lines have many varying views--this also increases the likelihood that people will vote more out of disdain for one than a liking of the other.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: American Political Term Limits

Yes, and that was one of a number of ways in which I oversimplified. American politics is, in terms of the presidency in the past 150 years or so at least, two party. We can also expect, if not fixed view, then a general range of political views under each umbrella. To a reasonable extent competition for the same market makes the parties quite similar, so clearly on that basis alone one candidate is not pure evil and the other pure good. However, there are very real ways in which policies are directly contradictory in terms of philosophy and effect. Democrats have usually been more interested in progressive policies of government economic intervention, while conservatives have usually favored market non-intervention. Neo-con's kind of screwed that up. The political landscape changes, but the important thing is that as time goes on the system as it is set up largely just negates itself. At least it has the greatest chance of doing so.