US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5417

On October 10 2016 09:54 biology]major wrote:


So it doesn't concern you that her influence has grown enormously and she still has the cf as a piggy bank for donations. Keep your blind faith friend.

On October 10 2016 09:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think dictatorships shouldn't really be confused with term limits. There are certainly historical examples of one person doing a good job leading a country for more than 8 years. In Norway, there are no term limits for the prime minister, and Einar Gerhardsen reigned for 17 years - and he's certainly considered one of our best, if not very best, prime ministers. FDR certainly among your greatest- and only one with more than 2 term limits. I think there are certainly valid reasons for why there should be a limit to how long one person can be president, but I'm not certain 8 years is that number. I get the argument about consolidation of power etc - but I also think that if one person clearly is the best suited person to lead the country and he's doing a bang job at it, it might be stupid to replace him.

Like, I think the surgeon analogy is generally pretty apt in describing why non-politicians shouldn't suddenly be elected for the highest office. Politics is actually a difficult profession - showcased by how many highly intelligent people manage to come off as incompetent. And imo, in much the same way you don't give someone with no education or experience a top surgeon job, you shouldn't appoint someone with no political competence or experience for the highest political office. It actually affects way more people than the misappointment of an incompetent surgeon anyway.

That also works another way- if you have the best surgeon in the country, you don't want him to stop working after 8 years. So like, even though there's a valid argument in favor of term limits with the whole consolidation of powers, there's also the counter argument that if someone is doing a sufficiently good job where there's agreement that (s)he's the best candidate for the job, they should get to keep doing their job.

As far as benevolent dictatorships go, from my admittingly limited understanding, there have been some pretty decent ones in south east asia, no? Like south korea had some benevolent transitional dictatorships, in Singapore Lee Kuan Yew might not fully qualify I guess, but I think he's been a fairly autocratic ruler who silenced opposition and who reigned for 30 years- but at the same time he did such a good job that there wasn't all that much opposition and he's given a whole lot of credit for Singapore's rapid and successful development. (I really don't know much about this, correct me if I'm wrong)

And while you can in theory argue that the benevolent dictator can exist, and while I think you can point at some historical examples where kings or dictators genuinely used all their efforts in bettering the conditions of their people and cared little about their own personal wealth or lavishness - and where genuine support in the population would be high enough to win democratic elections anyway - there's one inherent problem. The succession. Either you have parent to son/daughter succession which inevitably eventually produces a wholly unfit ruler, not to mention how anti-meritocratic the principle of the highest office of the land being inherited, or you are highly likely to face some form of power struggle which might lead to a civil war-ish state of affairs.

On October 10 2016 10:02 Nevuk wrote:
Is it normal to have family members of the candidates in these things? I'm just worried that the Trump sons are going to start shouting random shit