Split U.S. should scrap 12th Amendment

So, you ready for the election of 2008 where John McCain will win the presidency with Barack Obama as his vice president? The two are the perfect combination for the executive office right now, but we will never see a McCain-Obama anything because of our lovely party system and our Constitution.

John McCain is a right-winger from Arizona who is famous for creating election reform bills and being a general badass during the Vietnam War when he was a POW for five years.

A Democrat from Illinois, Barack Obama is the darling of the press for being purple in his policies and oozing charm in all directions.

Even though I think it would be a great four years with these two in office, there is a greater chance of a cat drowning in butter than a Democrat-and-Republican White House. The donkey and the elephant just don’t work that way, but this is more a result of the way the Constitution is written than the nature of the two beasts.

Back in the election of 1796, Americans ended up electing Adams and Jefferson, two men of opposing parties into the executive office. The lack of harmony was such an itch in everyone’s wigs that, in 1804, they passed the 12th Amendment, or as I see it, the reason why I won’t be able to buy McCain-Obama buttons in 2008.

Before that, the man with the most electoral votes was sworn in as commander in chief and the runner-up got to be vice president. Only now, because of the amendment, we vote for the vice president as part of the presidential candidate’s overall package.

Even though that has worked OK up until now, it might be time to strike it and give the old ways one more chance.

Think about it: The election numbers are getting closer and closer between candidates. In 1928, for example, Herbert Hoover won by a margin of 357 electoral votes and, in 1968, Nixon won by a mere 110 electoral votes.

But moving closer to the present, we can see that Bush won by only five electoral votes in 2000.

As the U.S. is more evenly split between their choices of leadership, does it seem fair to tell the other half to suck it up? If the 12th Amendment were abolished, we would have a more representative democracy.

No person agrees 100 percent with any single candidate or party. That would be absurd.

Therefore, the mesh of policies and parties we would obtain from returning to the original text of the Constitution would benefit us immensely.

Take the twosome I’ve been talking about as an example. McCain may be just peachy in several aspects, but I don’t agree with his opposition to abortion or pro-war leanings.

But I do think he would be an excellent foreign relations man and his policing of Capitol Hill corruption is necessary. The McCain-Feingold Bill was one of the first monumental pieces of legislation to directly address campaign reform. Also, McCain is currently working on immigration reform that won’t force deportation.

On the other hand, I agree with Obama’s education policies and the actions he has taken in aiding low-income Americans. However, he has only been a senator for three years and has a shaky plan for exiting Iraq.

McCain, at an austere 70, has the experience to lead the U.S., and Obama, a comparative ingenue, has the innovations to keep us running.

Even then ““ given the two-party system and the polarization of the country ““ these candidates could never really come together in their efforts.

And, of course, just banishing the 12th Amendment doesn’t automatically guarantee the White House to John and Barack; we still have to vote for them. Sometimes the candidates we elect will be from the same party and sometimes they will not.

A red president with a blue vice president may sound like the most inefficient form of governing even a rice field ““ let alone a country ““ but it is necessary to give up some efficiency in order for democracy and true representation to occur.

After all, the most efficient form of government is dictatorship, and we’ve all seen how well that works out.

Two of the dirtiest elections in history led by some of the best writers of the time, such as Hamilton and Jefferson, led us to believe that two men of different political parties could not possibly reach compromises.

I know they were Founding Fathers and their faces are all over our money, but the amendment that resulted from the beef they had with one another is an impediment to us now.

Two men in two different offices should not be tied together on a ticket just because of party identification.

If the executive office wants to be truly representative, it will have to learn to munch on carrots as well as peanuts.

E-mail rjoshi@media.ucla.edu for pocket constitutions. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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