Friday, November 10, 2006

It works, but does it work as well as it should?

I've read a number of columns and posts this week in which right leaning, right sympathizing, and conservative writers have said that this election shows that the system still works. In a macro, big picture sense I guess they are correct...the election showed that no one party is entrenched in power and the voters are still in charge. But just because something works does not mean that it necessarily works well. This election was what I would call a "passions of the people" election. It proved that the people can still change the government, but it did not necessarily prove that the change was for the better. Some Republicans deserved to go, no doubt. The party may not have even deserved to maintain a majority. What is concerning though is how the passion of the people was so uniformly applied against just about anyone with an 'R' next to their name. A lot of voters did not rationally choose the better candidate but instead they voted against a party. There were a number of individual Republicans who lost at the Federal and state levels not because they were the lesser candidate but because the fickle public opinion was running against the party. I don't think that is what our Founders envisioned for this system, but that is the system we now have.

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