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I try to stay away from politics on this blog, but here is a wish list of reforms (that assuredly won’t happen) that I think would drastically improve the political landscape of the nation:

1) The two parties should collapse under their own weight and disappear. Parties and party platforms should go out of style and individual elected officials have to forge compromises to pass substantive policy on a case-by-case basis.

2) Elected office will be like Jury Duty–people who meet certain minimum requirements for age, experience, education, etc. will be called up and asked to serve (willingness is important, of course) for a period of not more than two years, to be compensated at the rate of their current employment and/or a minimum of 40k a year.  Should they need to relocate, they will live in Officer’s Housing on the nearest adjacent military post.

3) Political candidates enter into a special status, much like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, wherein they are volunteering to waive certain rights: they must make their tax and other financial records public before and during their term of office. They may not accept campaign donations, purchase advertising, or otherwise try to buy an elected office with any form of war chest. Instead, they will be interviewed by a panel of journalists and citizens as to their political philosophy and ideas and transcripts of those interviews will be disseminated at government expense in an election pamphlet. Looks, delivery, charm, and taste will be irrelevant; ideas will have primacy.

4) Debates will be quite long, substantive, rigorous, specific, and will strictly adhere to the rules of logic and classical debate. No mudslinging. No fallacies. No lies. Failure to adhere to these rules can result in disqualification for office.

5) Political office-holders may meet with lobbyists only in open, public, televised forums. No junkets. No “special trips” to Bangkok. No quid pro quo.

6) Bills may not have riders. The law will be written in the simplest possible language and the writers of law will, without fail, eliminate needless words OR the Bill will automatically be disqualified from being brought to the floor until it is rendered as clear and brief as humanly possible. All Bills must be read  by every member of Congress before they are voted on. Period. If they haven’t read it, or had time to read it, then there is no vote.

7) Any office-holder found to have willfully lied to his constituents or colleagues about a professional/political matter will have his wages garnished for the first infraction, and will be dismissed from office after the second.

8) All bureaucratic agencies, including Intelligence Agencies, will undergo a bi-annual independent review for necessity, effectiveness, thrift, transparency (such as is possible, in the case of Intel), ethically sound practices, and compliance with the law. Any agency that receives a substandard rating has until the next review to get its house in order or it will be defunded, or, if vital to National Security, will undergo drastic management changes.

9) Civics and legal literacy classes will be instituted at all public institutions of education. Students should be exposed to major figures in political thought, major movements in the political history of the country and the world. They should be intimately familiar with the workings of their government and how they may wield influence over it.

10) All current laws including the tax code will be audited by Congress, (which will meet daily and take no days off except weekends and national holidays) for clarity, conciseness, necessity, and specificity. Riders and other special additions to any law will be separated from the bills they rode on and and re-evaluated on their own merits. This will be the work of decades, but our legislative system and therefore judicial systems will be more transparent and more easily understood by the populace for it.

11) Executive power will be curtailed massively; it will not be legal for a President to fail to enforce laws he/she does not like. He/she will enforce all laws as they are written. Executive Orders and the like will not be used as an end run around an uncooperative Congress. Presidents will not be allowed to make war without Congressional approval, up to and including assassinations by drone or deploying Special Forces into countries to conduct guerrilla operations.

With these measures, there is no professional political class and no lifetime bureaucratic elite. There is no lobby buying up politicians. There is no way to funnel money to office-holders in exchange for considerations. There is no showbiz-style campaigning, no mudslinging, no ridiculous ads. Congress can’t torture language and engage legal teams to torture language so as to obfuscate their doings. Party platforms do not exist; the question is always case-by-case as to what a law should/should not be and do. The people in power are there for only a short time, and they did not seek a life in politics, per se (and I distrust anyone who wants power, really).

It would be nice. And it would solve a lot of problems. But it ain’t gonna happen.