During my freshman year of collge I was participating in a RA training class and we where playing a game in which someone read a statement and we had to one side of the room or another depending if we agreeded with the statement or not. There was one statement of: I still believe in the US political system. I moved towarrds the agreeded side and a friend of mine, came over as well. He then made an interesting statement that most of the people on our side were Political Science Majors. I noticed that that was true and we both agreeded that the reason a lot of people were political science majors were because we still had faith in the system. We talked to the other majors in the department and this seemed to be the general consensus.
Now I am not saying the system is perfect I know it has it flaws, some major but I still thinks it works overall. I think the problem now is President Bush and his "I am the only important person" attitude. I do think that once he is out of office we see a significant improvement in the system. One of my political science professors told us that the parties dominated in cycles and that we were in a Republican cycle. Clinton was like Ike the opposition in a cycle dominated by the other side. Bush is like LBJ an unpopular President unwilling to admit his war is wrong. The Republican cycle, my prof said, would soon be over and I think he right. Come 2008 I think the Democrats take power for a while.
Now this bring me to my next topic the two party system. I have been the president of my college's Democrats club since my sophomore year. We always have interesting discussions and I keep wondering why a group of liberals keeps electing a moderate as their leader. At elast it crushes the sterotype that liberals are intolerant of other views. Now we get along great until we get to a issue we disagree on and one of those issues is the two party system. I think it works and it great, they do not. I think the two party system being stability to the country and we do not ahve to worry about extreme fringe parties popping up or colaitions breaking up. The same political professor that told me of the cyclical nature of politics told me that 90% of Americans were satisifed with the two party system and that was because America is a nation of moderates and that the two parties used to be moderate-left and moderate-right parties, that was until the GOP moved far right, so Americans were happy with this system. Now even thought the two parties were moderate parties there still were major differences between the two. The biggest one being that one of them cared about the poor and disadvantaged and the other was all about the individual. He also mentioned that the reason that voter turnout wasnt that high was because there was voter apathy going on. I thought about that and I guess that true. Ever since I turned 18 in 2003 I voted every Fall for some election or inititiave. For me I don't get voter apathy as I am a political junkie but I can see how some people can. Also he mentioned that people are not voting because they are satisifed with the way things are going and if vote when they are not satisfied. One other thing he mentioned was making voting mandatory which I thought was silly as manatory voting seems to be an contradiction in terms. It doesn't seem very democratic.
I know most of you will disagree with this and I respect that. We all have our own opinions. Thanks for taking the time to read it and hear me out.
SensibleDemocrat.