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.

Nice idea but the problem here is not the presidency, it's the two party system. Dems and republicans have locked out all other platforms and are stuck with frozen ideologies. They are more like two factions of the same party than like two different parties. We need to reform our voting to a multiple vote system so that other parties can finally get representation. Then you would be able to vote for the candidate that most suits your personal ideology (including independents) without having to waste your vote on merely choosing the lesser of two evils.

"You [sh]ould be able to vote for the candidate that most suits your personal ideology (including independents) without having to waste your vote on merely choosing the lesser of two evils."

Sure--that's a reform I favor, known as Instant Runoff Voting, or IR. But it's not logically an alternative to electing co-presidents. They're separate reforms, and either could be instituted independent of the other, with beneficial results. I.e., it's a good idea to decentralize power from the imperial presidency, just as has been done in state governments, where certain cabinet offices are no longer the governor's flunkies, because they've been chosen by the voters.

Many people don't know that in the original US constitution, the presidential candidate that got the most votes became president and the candidate with the second most votes became vice-president. I think they changed it to the present system because they were worried that the Pres and VP would be constantly working against each other, creating grid-lock.

Mr. Anderson, you are probably right about why they changed the system for electing the VP, but it isn't really relevant to this proposal. First, as the party system developed, it became almost inevitable that the VP (second most votes) represented a faction that was strongly opposed to the agenda of the President (most votes); since I am proposing that the various officers are elected separately, there is no reason that they would be from opposing parties. In fact, I suspect they are more likely to be from the same party, representing the general popularity of that party at the time of the election.

More importantly, the VP has essentially no power independent of the President -- he is primarily an aide to the President. Since almost all of the VP's powers are delegated by the President, a VP who opposes the agenda of the President is basically worthless (and a waste of a high-ranking statesman). In my proposal, the various officials would have separate sets of powers.

If you are concerned about how this would play out, the obvious place to look is in the state governments. Many states have maintained a divided executive for over two centuries, so the system clearly is not unworkable.