In the film “Dave,” Kevin Klein portrays the owner of an employment agency who bears this startling resemblance to the president of the United States.
Fate thrusts Dave into the role of filling in for the incapacitated president.
During a Cabinet meeting, the “president” — Dave — must find ways to cut the federal budget sufficiently to pay for some needed programs. He whips out a pencil and tablet and goes through the budget department by department and — presto! — finds the money.
Cabinet officials are stunned.
How might such a seemingly simple approach to problem-solving work in the real world of rough-and-tumble politics?
News organizations Monday night tallied up the delegates that Hillary Rodham Clinton has amassed and declared her to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. She joins Donald J. Trump, who already had become the Republicans’ presumed nominee.
Here, though, is the rub. Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t going quietly into the night. He vows to continue fighting Clinton for delegates all the way to the party nominating convention.
Why? He doesn’t like the “super delegate” system used by the Democratic Party. The supers are those party big wheels — elected officials, mostly — who get to vote for whomever they wish. Sanders, who only recently joined the party after serving in the Senate as an independent, thinks it’s unfair to count those super delegates prior to the convention. They can change their minds and he intends to persuade enough of them to do exactly that.
The Republicans don’t have that problem. They don’t have super delegates. Frankly, I prefer the GOP method.
What might Dave do?
Let’s try this out.
Call a meeting of the two major political parties’ top brass, GOP boss Reince Priebus and Democratic chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Put them in a room along with their parties’ lawyers and pose the question, “How about making this process a bit more uniform?”
Priebus and Schultz aren’t close. Imagine that, right? They have serious disagreements.
It seems totally within reason, though, for the parties to adopt more uniform delegate-selection processes. To be frank, the super delegate system used by the Democrats seems a bit weird. Sanders is hoping to change enough minds between now and the convention that he could “steal” the nomination from Clinton. I think that, by itself, is unfair and underhanded.
If both parties’ leaders believe in developing fair and even-handed methods of choosing their nominees, is it too much to ask them to hammer out an agreement that works for both sides?
I get that none of this nominating process is prescribed in the U.S. Constitution. It’s strictly a party matter. Heck, the Constitution doesn’t even mention political parties.
I’d even prefer to see the national parties lay down rules simplifying the method of apportioning delegates. Do they prefer to award them on the basis of the candidates’ share of the popular vote? How about winner take all? It makes no never mind to me. Just make it uniform.
The hodge-podge we have now makes me crazy.
Politics need not be this complicated, man.
