THE COMMON DILEMMA – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  How many people have told you that we're being presented this year with the worst presidential choices they've ever seen, and that they can't vote for any of the candidates.   Charles Krauthammer, often considered the most brilliant of the conservative columnists, is facing the same dilemma.  His decision?  From The New York Daily News: 

I didn’t need the Wiki files to oppose Hillary Clinton. As a conservative, I have long disagreed with her worldview and the policies that flow from it. As for character, I have watched her long enough to find her deeply flawed, to the point of unfitness. But for those heretofore unpersuaded, the recent disclosures should close the case.

A case so strong that, against any of a dozen possible GOP candidates, voting for her opponent would be a no-brainer. Against Donald Trump, however, it’s a dilemma. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. But, as I’ve explained in these columns, I could never vote for Donald Trump.

The only question is whose name I’m going to write in. With Albert Schweitzer doubly unavailable (noncitizen, dead), I’m down to Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse. Two weeks to decide.

COMMENT:  I've heard a number of people say that they intend to write in a candidate as a protest vote.  Instead of not voting, they would be making some kind of political statement.  Might not be a bad idea, but a better idea, and I think we'll see it, is to start examining the nominating process of each party.  That process got us to where we are.  Can't the United States of America do better than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?

And further...maybe it's time we examined a Constitutional change that would make it possible to have a new presidential election in less than four years.  Other democracies have mechanisms for removing a chief executive short of impeachment.  We might examine alternatives.  The four-year rigid term was established in the age of sail, when it took three months to get a letter across the Atlantic.  Our needs have changed.  I think we should be able to remove a president for sheer incompetence, and vote in a new one.  The process should be made difficult, to maintain the American tradition of stability, but the option, it seems to me, would enlarge democracy and act as a safety valve.

October 21,  2016