In elections for the President of the USA, voters are asked to choose one of two candidates, where the winner will have great influence over a large number of policies. As a result, voters often have to choose candidates who they agree with on some issues but disagree with on other issues. We can have a greater say in how our country is governed if we split up the executive power into multiple elected offices.
Many states have independently elected Treasurers and Attorney Generals, and it seems that the Federal government could stand to have those two departments made independent of the President. Other Federal Executive Departments could probably be split off also.
Presidential elections In the USA we could essentially make the head of each Federal Executive Department (cabinet secretaries) directly elected by the people rather than having them appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Of course, this would be a major reform, requiring a rearrangement of the departments and a Constitutional amendment. Fortunately, the experience of state governments could serve as a guide for this reform, as many of them have the Treasurer and Attorney General elected independently of the Governor.
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Unfortunately, current results indicate that the American people are severely limited in their capability to choose competent executives. Politics seems to dictate that the main thrust of elected officials is more to remain in power than to wisely serve their commissions and the indebtedness of the elected officials to their political contributers is, of late, so severe that corruption has overwhelmed almost every other possibility of executive capability.
Sand, your opinion is just that. However, instead of turning this into some political flamewar, I'll state that, in my opinion, government has gotten much bigger since its inception 200+ years ago. As we've added offices and departments and commissions and yada yada yada, perhaps it's time to rearrange some things. Instead of the President appointing someone and Congress approving them, perhaps Congress should come up with three choices per position and let the President choose among them. Perhaps Attorney General and Director of Homeland Security should be elected positions.
Maybe the position of President should be by Draft. "Hey, you've run your business (or state, or organization) fairly and competently, see how well you run a country!"
Admittedly my comment was political, but the can of worms was intrinsic in the suggestion. I am concerned, as was the suggester, over the breakdown of many vital government functions. The private sector is no less subject to anti-social motivations as evidenced by WorldCom, Enron and the still voracious Halliburton and the drug companies which are more concerned with the bottom line than humanitarian objectives so the solution lays in more fundamental reforms of social structure and I have no obvious solutions. Tinkering with small changes is vulnerable to the worst motivations of humanity, unfortunately.
Interestingly, in the late 1960s the Black Panther party's platform included a plank calling for cabinet members to be more independent of the president, perhaps even independently elected. Maybe we could start with two co-presidents, one for domestic affairs and the other for foreign affairs, including defense.
PS: Elections for the co-presidents could be staggered; i.e., every two years one or the other would be elected.
If some cabinet officers are elected, they could be in off-off years (odd-numbered), to avoid swamping the electorate with details of national policy.