Just a thought

I was reading Peggy Noonan's article from her Opinion Journal article from 12/14/07. It got me thinking about something. With all of the effort being put into next years presidential election, I was trying to put things into perspective.

Let's say the next president is in office for one term. They will be in the position for 4 years. How much effort is put into getting elected for that 4 year term. Campaigning has been going on pretty hot and heavy since the middle of this year. So the new President will spend one and a half years for the 4 year term. Doesn't seem efficient does it?

On top of the amount of time spent, it gets worse if you think about what the time is being spent on. Right now each party is fighting against each other to agree on a candidate. Most of their time is spent tearing down the others. (One of which could be the Vice Presidential candidate) It is a shame that this time isn't spent solving the issues that they will only talk about for one and a half years.

What if we as a country were allowed to vote, midway through a Presidential term, on the issues that are most important to us. The candidates then would be given the challenge of producing a detailed plan as to how these issues would be resolved if they became president. These plans could then be reviewed, discussed, modified and published to the American people. We would then vote for the candidate that had the best solutions to the issues and that candidate would hit the ground running after being elected. This would require the candidates to actually spend that year and a half doing something constructive as opposed to destructive.

Just a thought.

Link to Peggy's article