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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

How could it have been corrected? Though I hesitate to say Romney would have been worse, he gave no indication of being better.

Plus, campaign promises have a tendency toward melting away when facing hard reality. Even if a Green or Libertarian candidate had won (absolutely 0% chance), there's no reason to think they'd have followed through on their promises. They might want to, but so does Obama, presumably. It's just the structure of government that someone in the executive branch isn't going to be willing to use all of their political capital in a battle that weakens their own authority.

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"It's just the structure of government that someone in the executive branch isn't going to be willing to use all of their political capital in a battle that weakens their own authority."

In other words, once you give government power, there's essentially no chance that they will relinquish it.

I suspect a third party would be far more likely to expect only one term and attempt to accomplish as much as possible without worry for re-election. Though there have been so few examples of "true" third party wins at high levels to know. The best example might be Jesse Ventura. As well, you might expect people who consistently run as a third party knowing no chance of winning to be less susceptible to the political machine than others.

Ventura only 'sought one term' because most of the state of Minnesota despised him and he never would've won re-election. He barely won the election as it was, with a bare plurality of votes in a 3 person race: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_electio...

Plus, campaign promises have a tendency toward melting away when facing hard reality.

I have a hard time believing that campaign promises are anything other than lies, told bald-facedly in order to satisfy an image being portrayed by the campaign. It's all an act, just like this NSA speech is likely just an act designed not to change anything. Reality is that they're going to do whatever they want to do.

There was a primary each time. It could have been another Democrat. Or you could have voted third party. As long as you vote for either major, you're voting for the same thing.

C'mon. Doesn't everything Obama has said on surveillance sound exactly like what Bush would have said? They're the same, they just use different dog whistles.

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