OPINION

For a better president, shrink the presidency

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

The primaries are over, it looks like it’s going to be Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and a lot of people are unhappy.

The White House

Now, being disliked doesn’t necessarily make you a bad candidate or a bad president. Even so: It’s hard to look at Clinton and Trump and seriously believe that, out of a nation of more than 300 million people, these are the best two people to lead the country.

Clinton has moved from the still-unfolding email scandal to a cronyism scandal, in which an unqualified donor was put on a sensitive government intelligence panel involving nuclear weapons.

Trump is basically called a racist by his party’s previous nominee, Mitt Romney. It’s true that most every GOP nominee gets called racist every four years. But usually it’s by Democrats, not high-ranking fellow Republicans.

Trump and Clinton – like every presidential candidate before them in my lifetime – are products of a grueling and demanding multistate, multimonth evaluation process. Yet it’s hard to say this process is doing a good job at finding good presidents.

Instead, it filters for people who are good at winning primary elections, which doesn’t have much to do with actually governing as chief executive.

In my lifetime there have been a number of lousy presidents, and few really good ones. A company that consistently picked leaders whom many people disliked, and whose performance was often poor, would probably reevaluate its selection process.

Maybe we should do so, too. But how?

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

We could limit the presidency to people who have been governors. That way, everyone involved would have experience as a chief executive. (It would also have the advantage of making senators focus on doing their job instead of running for president, as so many of them do from day one – so even if it didn’t produce better presidents, we’d probably get a better Senate).

We could also eliminate the popular vote and let the presidential candidates be elected solely by the Electoral College, which in fact elects them now using the popular vote as guidance. They could actually interview for the job. With no national campaign, they would have to make the case to small groups of people, face to face. Or maybe we should just conduct a lottery among registered voters. How much worse could it be?

But these kinds of suggestions, aimed at the people doing the job, probably miss the real problem, which is the job itself: The presidency as it exists today is a mess. Presidents have too much power, too little accountability and too high a public profile. That makes the job attract the wrong sort of people, and then ensures they’re not up to it.

If we were to shrink the government, and shrink the presidency, we might find that what was left would attract better people – and would be easier even for lesser mortals to execute.

When your political system consistently delivers bad results, it’s time to look at a change.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.