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Sadly, I've been voting against the lesser of two evils since I was old enough to vote. If Loren thinks 16 years are bad, try nearly that many administrations--not that I actually despised them all---but it does appear that if anyone this great country produces has the sense and moral fiber to be a worthy president of it, s/he also has sense enough to have no desire to be one. Certainly, with the scrutiny of each instant of their private lives and beliefs that's now demanded, I can't imagine anyone with either holding such aspirations!

True - political ambitions should disqualify a candidate. Which means that probably the best way to select polititians would be a lottery - something like jury duty.

But this also illustrates another peculiarity of American political life: you actually don't have political parties as we in Europe understand them; it's more like two teams in continous play-off: tactics continuosly changing, players being traded, but essentially just two franchizes doing their lucrative job. We more or less have four or five slots across the political spectrum (demo-christians, social democrats, liberals...) plus some folklore; the difference is in conrete issues, and you pretty well know where each party stands. Granted, the situation is getting a bit more fluid recently on issues like social security, country-wide collective bargaining, immigration...