I usually don't write about politics. However, with the current presidential primary race it is hard to resist. While I have my opinions about the candidates, I write today about the larger systemic issue. As you may know I am a marriage and family therapist, and also an expert in multisystemic therapy. So, inevitably I look at large scale problems from a "zoomed out" systemic context. Here is what I just cannot get over.
In 1780 (just 3 years after the declaration of independence was signed) our population was 2,780,369. By 1860 when we started including Native Americans in the census, it was just under 31.5 million. In 1920 is was just over 106 million people. (Stats courtesy of Wikipedia). As of March 1st, 2016, the population clock at Census.gov has us at 323,086,798!! Now, having a 4 year term as president, with a limit of 2 terms, may have made sense when we had only a few million people. Now, however, I think it is nonsense. This becomes especially apparent when taking into account that senators get 6 year terms and members of the House get 2 year terms, but BOTH ARE UNLIMITED as long as they get re-elected!
Please take a moment and think about how long it may have taken you to make a personal change your life, whether it be your diet, spending habits, smoking cessation, etc. Or, for example, if you are a parent and you want to work with your teenager on meeting his/her curfew, or you're potty training your toddler. For many, this kind of individual change takes weeks or months. Now consider making a change in your family. Maybe you are working on communication with your spouse, or saving for a special vacation thereby altering your family budget. To do these things it takes months or more, and the support of other people in your life to make it happen. It may take time just to get everyone doing their part.
Now imagine making any kind of systemic change for millions off people. When we were a few million people or a couple of scores of millions it may have worked well to make change in a couple of years, with a political system involving change agents at many levels (President, Congress, legislators at state and town levels, etc.). Now, with 323 million people and counting in our country, no president should be expected to make any significant or measurable change in just 8 years, let alone 4. The Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935 and we just figured out a few years ago that it is not sustainable. It's an extreme example, I know. But hopefully you don't miss the point. Personally, for the reasons I write about above, I think it is just too soon to tell how well the Affordable Care Act is working. Just think about it for a minute. While you're at it, why are we giving so much credit to the president anyway? If members of congress (thank you big corporations) and supreme court justices can stick around for as long as they do, we should really be putting more responsibility on them as change agents, anyway.
We are not going to see any real change in this country as a result of whomever is president unless they can be re-elected for more than only 2 terms.
