Well, rbell, so far ever since the War Between the States the voters have only swung back and forth between the Republicans and the Democrats - and the country has not been well-served by this. Even though we think we have a great system, the American people are given fewer choices on the ballot than the voters in lots of other democratic systems. Third parties and independents are required to spend a great deal of money and effort to just get on the ballot which the two major parties get for nothing. The GOP began as a third party in the 1850s. Today the GOP would have a hard time even getting on the ballot if it was not an old established party.
The American people are given NO choices on the ballot. They are given the opportunity to select people based on campaigns and the primary system, which selects the persons who will ultimately be on the ballot. If there is no good choice, then the blame rests squarely on the people who do or do not work the system as designed and intended by our Founders.
Same goes with term limits for elected candidates. The public controls the length of time that any given candidate serves. We can un-elect them during any election cycle where they are up for a vote. That some have held their seats for decades only means that people in opposition have not risen up and taken care of business.
In truth, we have the best political system on earth, but because the responsibility for our government rests squarely on the backs of the people -- and the people are either "dumbed down," "uninterested," or otherwise disaffected from the political world, we often do not get the best candidates and have to suffer the effects of the "lesser of two evils" ballot that we so often see. "We the people," in large sense, have given over our rights to those who would steal and hold power for their own gain, and that largely because we either do not understand our own political system, fail to participate in our own political system, or because we are duped into voting a certain way by promises that are essentially meaningless based on popularity or other factors (like party choice apart from actually examining the voting record of the candidate) that limit our choices to those we do not care to elect.
Want true change? Find the right candidate, work for he or she, and get out the vote. Want status quo and a party that has been largely in power since the 1930s? Just continue to buy into political slogans and fail to actually understand the issues and direction of each of the two major parties and the primary system that delivers those candidates.
