Can We Trade-In Bad Politicians?

We have a long history of fences. Every nation does.  Lines are drawn around our family,  property next,  city, state, and finally the entire nation. The tendency to draw lines apparently goes all the way back to the creation of man.  History indicates that man has always fought over his "lines".  Isn't this an elementary history of most wars ?  Recently, several scientists  invented a weapon that would win all wars, the Atomic bomb. An unwanted side effect is that man now may have  enough power to blow the earth right out of orbit. It was, I suppose, inevitable that the atomic bomb technology would spread. There are now a dozen nations, some quite unstable, that have the atomic technology.  

The good guys, led by the citizens of the United States,  have a right to be worried, very worried because we are not the most stable and reliable nation any more. We regularly elect and appoint politicians whose only interests are less than honorable:

• They refuse to stop spending money borrowed from future generations. (We are now  almost 20 Trillion dollars in debt.)

• After their election almost all of them vote to spend more money - BEFORE insisting on eliminating unnecessary costs and expenses. 

• Then, after getting elected, they spend the majority of their time campaigning to be re-elected. (How many actually study, discuss and are present to vote on the issues; 10%, 25%, 50%? or more)?

• And why do we allow establishment political leaders to set their own pay, and decide their own perks, and vote themselves grandly excessive retirement pay? These are the same unprincipled politicians who decide whether or not to bomb somebody into oblivion. 

Something isn't right here !

The military establishment has increasingly become a foreign policy tool of our politicians.  This was not the original intention. The Founding Fathers clearly divided the governmental powers into three separate units, and intended the military to be guided overall by them. The consensus of general direction was to emanate from the President, and the military to follow the overall political directions. Since the WWII the power to direct the war, without consulting  either the Congress or Senate, has been moved to the office of the President. 

This probably is not to the advantage of the Nation. Consider the unpopular war in Viet Nam. We watched as President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary Robert MacNamara ordered the military to carpet bomb and destroy Viet Nam. They were also responsible for killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians. 

Forward a few years, and now we are involved in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, and this time President Obama is calling the shots? Mr. Obama's Presidency has followed an unpopular Foreign Policy. Many of our citizens believe his administration to be the most incompetent of them all.  Mr. Obama is proud that he's been able to misdirect the military establishment, and proud that he has moved to destroy our relations with most of nations of the world - without the advice of the Congress or Senate or citizenry.  

There is something fundamentally wrong with this picture.