The majority of voters have the representatives they want (approval rates for peoples' own Congresspeople are extremely high). If you keep in mind the demographics that bother to vote (my 65 year old mom, but not my 30 year old wife and I), they have the government they want too. My mom is super excited about Hilary and would vote for life imprisonment for drug dealing if anyone put it on a referendum.
If McCain had won in 2008 would the US have passed national health care reform?
In fact, it's probably the ideal way to promote anyone in any setting. I'd make a few small adjustments, however. Rather than random selection, I'd like the pool of candidates to be reviewed by their peers and scored for ability, creativity, fairness, leadership -- whatever skills are appropriate in their realm. Then I'd like to see some sort of weighting applied to the random choice that favors the "best and the brightest" over the bottom dwellers.
And it goes without saying... no campaigning or re-election.
(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. (2) After selections, the losing party would attack the random selection process. (3) Assuming the selection is allowed to go through without objection, the random person would be under the same duress that elected candidates have to accept bribes and kickbacks. (4) It's possible that the average citizen would be more prone to reap their rewards during their short term in office, rather than someone who's mindful of their full career.
I'm guessing you're just being flippant out of cynicism against the current system, but I'm a little over that line of thinking.
Well, abolish the parties too then. It's just citizens.
It seems like a sensible approach to me. Much like having members of a jury selected, it should be considered a civic duty and not a career path.
