The Ideal Form of Government?

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How accurate would you say was my election prediction last week?

Some people think we have the best possible system, because in the long-term it's so stable compared to other democracies.

But how can anyone be happy with a system that spends - collectively - over a billion dollars just to elect the president? 

Combined, all of the races have spent $14 billion.

These amounts seems obscene to me. Can't we get the job done cheaper than that (without outsourcing to China)?

Imagine what else could have been done with that $$$. 
 

Election week always reminds me of my late friend Norman Hansen.

I met Norman in the 1980s when he was 90. He had retired at age 65 and spent the next 25 years reading many books of history and political science and traveling the world. 

So by the time I met him, he was a highly-opinionated old man.

My favorite quote from him: "The biggest mistake of my life was voting for Roosevelt in 1944 - I should have known he was too sick!"

Norman was a keen student of political theory, and loved to quote Toynbee quoting Lord Acton: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Yet paradoxically, he had come to the conclusion that "the greatest form of government possible" is a "benign monarchy". That is, something like the Danish model, he said. (Although I am not sure now which period of Danish history he was referring to.)

So all this leads to tonight's question for your table: What's the ideal form of government?


Shabbat Shalom

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