2. The military boondoggles have continued uninterrupted since the collapse of the USSR almost regardless of who is in charge. G.W. Bush ran on a platform of not getting involved in foreign entanglements the way Clinton did, then Obama ran on a platform of not getting out of the entanglements that Bush got us into!
That said, the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College. This can be done either by Constitutional amendment, or by the agreement of a certain number of states [0].
What it wouldn’t fix is the huge body of campaign and election law and regulations that make it so there will always be exactly 2 major parties, starting with first past the post voting [1]. While Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem [2] practically guarantees we will have some paradoxical outcomes if we have 3 or more parties, even if we eliminate first past the post, I believe first past the post is one of the most anti-democratic practices we have in this country.
Finally, while this isn’t really a hard fact, it seems to me that parliamentary forms of government tend to last longer than presidential governments. Changing this in the US would be near impossible, requiring a Constitutional amendment, but it seems to me it is our best hope of lasting another 200 years.
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
This would certainly benefit the Democrats, but I don't see it as a "solution". It would give states without large urban areas even less political leverage than they have now. Presidential campaigns would not even bother visiting most states, since locking up enough votes in large urban areas (all of which are solidly Democratic) would be sufficient to win the election all by itself.
The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of the country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that purpose.
At that it succeeded. Instead, we have a minority running roughshod over the majority. Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%.
No, we have government that is more limited in what it can do because of lack of consensus between different parts of it (the President, Senate, and House). Which is exactly what should happen if the country is closely divided.
> Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%.
Which indicates that neither side has a majority, let alone enough of a majority to justify running roughshod over everyone else (which IMO is a lot more of a majority than just 51%).
Also, do you have any data points for presidential governments lasting less long than parliamentary governments?