Optimus Prime for President

I like to think that I am a well-informed, intelligent citizen of voting age. As a result, I like to think that my decision of Barack Obama for president was a good one. Then I got thinking about who I would have voted for 15 years ago. I would have voted for Optimus Prime, or perhaps Teddy Ruxpin. So obviously my current state of "all-knowingness" has evolved over time and is likely due to the fact that I went to a liberal arts college in Walla Walla, WA called Whitman College. The curriculum at Whitman revolves around teaching its students that they are smarter than everybody else, but to be polite about the whole thing, because Whitman is a small school and you don't want to come across sounding like an asshole.

As I was watching clip after clip of Obama stepping out of an airplane with his wife, I recalled clip after clip of Obama doing his thing on the economy, and I thought "I have to sit through 3.5 more years of this shit?" I began to play a thought game. What if Obama, and his entire presidency, was simply one of media pandering? What if Obama's role in the White House was solely based on being a public relations sweetheart? What if his only accomplishment was restoring the good image of the president without actually accomplishing anything of substance? It is not a stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't even neccesarily call it a failure of his time in office. What I would consider it is a waste of four years in office.

I think, 100 years ago, four years was considered a very short period of time. A president could accomplish just enough, and so a second term was allowed. Today, four years is an eternity. Wars can begin and end, markets can collapse and restructure, companies can gain and lose billions in less time than a president can sit in his office and take a cat nap. The days of the four year term are over.

Two years, three terms. Can you imagine if Bush had to get elected THREE times to stay in office for 3/4 of the time? The system would regulate itself and in the off chance mistakes were made, it would heal itself more quickly. In such a short period of time candidates and parties will not be able to raise and spend the type of money that is being spent on campaigns currently. We will be forced to focus more on leadership rather than an individual. Obama would be able to dedicate less time to making himself a media darling.

The rate of change in America is such that we need to restructure our system of electing officials and how long their leadership can actually stay fresh and pertinent. Lifetime terms for Supreme Court justices? Give me a break. 90 year-old Congressman? Send that asshole to a retirement home and let's institute some term limits. We are in an economic crisis because we allowed too few people to retain too much power and decision making ability for too long of a time. It corrupted them, and we had no way to displace a lot of that leadership until it was too late. A constant cycling cleansing of the waters would not only be beneficial, but I think it is neccessary.