If you mention a new candidate to a sane person, they will immediately ask "Whats his/her's stance of <issue>?". People dont really vote for candidates, they vote for their stances on issues that concern them.

So why do we have reps intertwined with issues like we do? Why not vote on the decisions themselves and then elect someone to carry them out? Seems like it would have far less leeway for corruption and far less lesser-of-two-evils going on to me.

That would be cool. You should write up an amendment to the Constitution and get a petition going.

Maybe I should, but theres this whole being-nowhere-near-to-america-and-being-grateful-about-that thing I have going on that I might have to get past first.

We can't solve our own problems, so maybe we need an outisder to do it for us. You seem like the right person. If you read the Constitution once you should have a better understanding of it than most of our government employees, so you'll be qualified to write an amendment.

Well the problem is they handle way more stuff than the major issues everyone likes to talk about and trying to allow everyone to vote on everything would be cumbersome at best. I'd like to see more stuff done by referendum but I think at this point it's best reserved to a local level.

Everyone says thats a problem, yet Ive never seen any proof of it.

1.) That would be an impossible guarantee, when certain events happen (9/11) you can't always rely on the ideas you chose to support (like maybe being anti-war).

2.) What would happen if that person failed to carry out those "decisions", impeachment? That would create massive upheval if we had to put every President on trial. I mean, how else would you prevent Presidents from upholding the ideas they voted on? Thats not a rhetorical question, I'm sure there is an answer but I can't think of it lol, maybe congressional oversight? But that would fuck up the balance of power...

1.) You do of course realise that the REASONABLE response to 9/11 wouldve been to change planes so that you cant get from the passenger part to the pilot part while in flight? And perhaps to reign in imperialism somewhat? If you really insist, a referendum sounds perfectly reasonable before declaring war.

2.) If the person fails to do their job, there is clear evidence that they should be "fired".

Since when do the rich & powerful care for more than the appearance of the People's power to vote on policies? Since when do most people have much interest learning about the actual issues?

When there are 30 or 40 competing issues going on: should people vote for each issue separately or 3 & 4 at a time?

Whatever, my point was simply that certain events arise that require Presidents to change their policies (i.e. the Great Depression, WW II, 9/11 and so on). So it is unreasonable to have a guarentee he won't change the agenda, which is why we vote on people with ideas and not ideas.

Yeah...But firing the President causes ALOT of problems, this is why Nixon was never indicted, it just brings alot of unnecessary social upheaval that isn't good for the country. So unless you come up with a better solution then this won't work. We can't go around "firing" a President when he raises taxes after promising not to 8 months ago...