Let’s Change the Way We Choose Our Government

Over the past week, millions of Americans have taken action to assist people devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Small businesses, big businesses, people with very little and people with a lot have donated money, housing, clothing, medicine – whatever they had and whatever they could.

The problem was there was no central point to send aid and there was no one in charge. A vacuum of leadership existed in an area that desperately needed someone to take the reigns.

Political bickering, finger pointing, and red tape took precedence over leading relief and rescue.

Clearly, we haven’t learned too much about dealing with disaster over the past few years.

What we have learned however is important.

The way we “do” politics and the way we govern our country must change.

We need a complete overhaul of the way this country works. We need to eliminate partisan politics that have come far too close to ruining our country.

We need a new party comprised of Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Independents, Socialists and previous non-voters - a party that will step up to the plate and recognize that our government is looking increasingly like the government of the former Soviet Union - incapable of governing.

We need this new party to be comprised of competent caring people – like the ones who immediately offered what they could to those affected by the hurricane. We need the people within the new party to have the courage to work for all citizens rather than merely stump for our vote in the next election.

This new government will NOT be partisan. It will contain only those people who value humanity, who practice democracy, who absolutely believe in human rights and human dignity of all - and who can travel 1,000 miles to pass out bottles of water when needed, even when it isn’t pleasant.

There is no reason that we should ever again watch the faces of people in the last throes of life while they starve, drown, or are overlooked.

We’ve got to stop electing just a President and Vice President and begin demanding to know who will be appointed to help them run our country. The President appoints almost 6,000 (!) such people and I suggest that any candidate for President identify at least the top 100 of these appointees during his or her campaign. Doing so will let us clearly see what types of policies will likely be initiated and will give us a better sense of how this group would run the country.

I personally have been trying to sell this idea to our country since before the last election and have set up the Progressive Government Institute. Visit this site if you’d like to learn about the people who are supposed to “run” things in this country right now.

Meanwhile I am so aggravated by what we all just saw in New Orleans that I’m thinking very hard about giving up my life for the next two years to assemble a team of 200 or so people who amongst themselves would pick a Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate and then would run together in 2008 as an alternative administration to what the Republican and Democrats will be offering us in 2008.

Any encouragement from anyone interested in this idea is welcome.

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Written in collaboration with Jennifer Hicks