We need a better way
to choose our leaders

 Most of these losers, from McGovern on, were the products of "reform politics." There were no smoked-filled rooms in which the power brokers of the party assembled to choose a candidate. Since the men in the smoke-filled room had a vested interest in winning, they did not have the luxury of the politics of ideology and moral victory. They would not have tolerated the folly of turning the selection of a presidential candidate over to Iowa and New Hampshire.

  The party is, to quote former President Bill Clinton (on another matter), risking the presidential election on a roll of the dice (and does anyone think that his nomination was not a roll of the dice?).

In an era in which elections are likely to smell like thievery, the party should choose as its nominee the person who is most likely to win by a large plurality and whose victory is thief-proof. The chance of such a man winning in Iowa and New Hampshire is pretty thin.

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Who does best in the trial heats now? I would wager that most Democrats don't know and probably don't care. They have their own ideological favorites, and they avoid the trial heats as though they were infectious. A good candidate is one who has the best chance of winning. If the Democrats can't win this presidential election with the advantages handed them by the Bush administration, it will be decades before they get another chance. The risks to the country and the world in a continuation of the current foreign policy are so great that for the Democrats to seize defeat out of the jaws of victory would not only be stupid; it would be tragic.

 Yet no sensible person with knowledge of the history of the Democratic party since "reform" set in should doubt the possibility of another "moral victory." Chicagoan that I am, I don't believe in moral victories.

The creaky, clumsy, hopelessly undemocratic Electoral College pushes the country into a situation in which it might just as well depend on reading the signs in the intestines of dead birds or the location of the stars or other augurs. Add the madcap "reform" nomination process, and one is in a situation where one asks for another card in a game of 21 when one is holding 19.

The horrors of the Bush administration demonstrate beyond doubt that the country needs a better method for choosing its leaders, even if such change would require a constitutional amendment, hopefully including a limit on the length of the campaign and also restrictions on campaign tactics like the "Swift boat" caper. Victory should not belong to those whose staffs are most successful in digging up "dirt" on their opponents.

Who then is the Democratic candidate that runs far ahead of the various Republicans in most of the trial heats? I don't think it is proper for a columnist to endorse a candidate, especially when the columnist is a priest. So I won't tell you. Find out for yourselves. Or check out: www.realclearpolitics.com /epolls/2008/president/national.html. 

Read Father Greeley's latest Articles: 
We need a better way to choose our leaders   Christmas season is time of hope
U.S. intelligence usually wrong                       Priests are happy without wives
Bishops' message wins few votes                    Researchers miss cause of abuse
New York is no model for America                   Two welcome insights from Readers
Mukasey would enable power grab                 Americans are feeling broken hearted
Will we fall for war vs. Iran?                            U.S. needs to get back on track
Why are there no war crimes trials?               Bias against 'illegals' unacceptable? 
Why won't Bush admit mistakes?                  Bush not swayed by Iraq reality

Read the Chicago SunTimes' Daily Southtown articles.