I don't understand politics...

The political process in the United States is unfortunate. Once a certain personality or a certain simplistic perspective takes hold it is quite difficult to change course, to reconsider, to create productive and sophisticated synthesis. Our democracy succeeds in avoiding the excesses of monarchy and manages to facilitate progress to some extent, from time to time. But our system has clearly not succeeded in producing a healthy, adaptable and sustainable society. Unless more mature leadership emerges, leadership that is capable of deliberation and synthesis, we will continue to decline. I am talking about all leadership, not only the presidency, all those voted into public office need to have more integrity, passion and ingenuity. Most of all, at this stage, we need leadership that is strong enough to help the nation move past the manipulative slogans and narrow perceptions that result in the election of individuals who are incapable of true and thoughtful collaboration. Few of our elected officials possess the character traits that are required of those who would participate in a creative and productive political process. Our best hope at this point in our history may be the emergence of a new political organization that identify candidates based on a combination of intelligence and personal characteristics. To accomplish this it will be necessary to train our citizens to value learning and appreciate the political process. We must realize that in order for our nation to succeed we have to think as a group in some ways, rather than the individual (a distinctly unamerican way to think). In the absence of an innovative process such as this or something else that is able to change the nature of politics I think it is quite likely that our nation will never recover from the current and growing difficulties that are before us. We cannot move forward because we are simply engaged in a bi-partisan struggle on every issue. It is sickening and is causing the decline of our great nation.