Should America’s Presidential election go back to its original format?

If you ask most Americans, chances are they wouldn’t know how the early Presidents and Vice-Presidents of this country were decided.

Starting with our country’s first Presidential election until the signing of the 12th Amendment, the Vice-President was the individual who received the second most electoral votes. This led to the obvious result of have the winning Party hold the Presidency and the losing Party the Vice-Presidency. This is how one of our country’s biggest political enemies in history, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, ended up serving with each other.

As we look out over our 50/50 nation today and the divisiveness that grips us, I wonder if going back to such a format would be better for the nation. Having the other Party hold the Vice-Presidency would give comfort to the party out of power and for the nation, the devils advocate it needs.

Though I’m a Republican and believe when it comes to economic and foreign policy they have a better understanding of the realities of the world, I also believe that having a dissenting voice allows only the strongest and best policies to survive.

The early days of our nation had issues like whether to even build a military that were more decisive, heated and critical then the issues we currently are fighting over today, like stem cell research. If John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could survive during a time when the rules were still being written I’m sure today’s political Party’s could make it work as well.