In honor of Thanksgiving Day, I thought I would share some of the things for which I am most grateful.

Having had two great parents who conceived and nurtured me when I was a boy, supported me with their blessings throughout their lives, and bequeathed me some resources that have enriched my life since their passing.

Having two wonderful sons (Jesse and Scott) who have taken hold of, and responsibility for, their own lives while keeping me as an important person to them.  Now having the opportunity to get to know and appreciate their partners, their partner’s families, and now my first grandson (the amazing Wesley).

Having Lynn as a loving, supportive, and helpful companion who ignited my heart more than 50 years ago, who still does so today, and who has for the past 18 years shared her life with me in a very successful marriage.

Having an “ex” (Jean) who not only brought my sons into the world and helped to bring them up right, but has been kind to, and considerate of, me since our divorce.

Having an extended family (the Matthews and Dorseys),  as well as step-children (Cora and Roland) and in-laws  (the Burlinghams, Scotts, Bakers, and Kennans) who respect and accept me for who I am and bring a lot of interesting personalities and experiences into my life.

Having many friends – some dating back to my childhood and college who have shared interesting endeavors with me over the years and others who are part of my everyday life here in Lawrence  – who provide the ordinary companionship that we all need.

Having had sufficient education, income, and capital to live well thus far, and provide ample resources to enable Lynn and I to live well in the years that remain.

Having a lovely home here in Lawrence and a wonderful cabin in Wisconsin that provide important senses of place, give opportunities to putter around on various improvements, and serve as take off spots for my various activities.

Having the continued capacity to engage in these activities – ranging from biking and kayaking through tennis and golf.  While various injuries have sometimes limited these capacities, I am more appreciative than ever of the good health I have long enjoyed and the opportunities I have had to keep reasonably fit.

Having had many wonderful experiences (including various trips abroad and in the US) and achievements (like  running a marathon, biking across Iowa, and climbing some 14,000 footers).  Also having many memories – ranging from my own athletic, academic, social, and romantic experiences to observing similar kinds of experiences  in the lives of my family and friends.

Having had a very satisfying career at KU for the past 45 years.  Unlike more elite universities where professional success requires focusing (fairly) exclusively on research, and unlike lesser colleges where professional success requires focusing exclusively on teaching, KU provided me a place where I could balance my research, teaching, and service interests in ways that I generally found satisfying.

Having had a couple of opportunities to provide leadership to my department and help it achieve both its collective goals and the individual goals of my colleagues.

Having the opportunity to teach political theory – which I believe is an extremely important and interesting topic – to thousands of students, and to earn the appreciation and respect of most of them.

Having a vast collection of ideas (sometimes retained in my memory but more often preserved in books, papers, notes, etc.) and the capacity to pursue and develop both old and new ideas (sometimes in writings such as those provided on this website) at my own pace and in my own voice in the years ahead.

Having lived in places of freedom and opportunity through the halcyon years – a time of relative peace and prosperity in America and a time when higher education was widely available and yet reasonably rigorous.  But also having to deal with events and difficult circumstances that provided challenges worthy of my time and energy.

Having many opportunities in the years ahead to re-experience in new ways all the things I have already enjoyed and to acquire new experiences – things I can only dimly imagine now.

As Trump moves into the White House,  it is widely assumed that he lacks any sort of well-structured political ideals and beliefs.  Thus, little attention has been given to characterized his ideology, while the focus has been on the ideology of his chief strategist, Steve Brannon. It would probably be worthwhile to provide a thorough analysis of Bannon’s worldview, but here I will simply consider his reputation as a deep intellectual.

Bannon’s “intellectualism” is often attributed to his being what Isaiah Berlin called “a hedgehog”– a person who views the world from the perspective of a single defining idea — rather than as “a fox” – a person who views the world from a variety of perspectives and considers a variety of experiences.  In short, Bannon’s intellectualism comes from his holding and consistently expressing ideas based on a  “grand theory of political history.”  He believes that there are regular historical cycles.  In his view, periods of economic prosperity and political stability inevitably are followed by challenges from those who have grievances with some element of society.  As such challenges diffuse, society unravels and becomes deeply divided, political stalemate ensues, and social and economic problems remain unresolved.  Such periods in history – which Bannon and his followers believe we are now experiencing – end with some crisis or upheaval (such as the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great Depression, or World War II).

The intellectual perspective of hedgehogs like Brannon are attractive because they capture some facets of life and appeal to our hopes and/or fears, but they are always partial and limited.  For example, Brannon’s theory of history is just one of many cyclical theories. Others are as old as Polybius’s theory that history is comprised of recurring historical stages of monarchy aristocracy, and democracy and their corrupt forms of tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule.  Other cyclical theories are more recent, such as Arthur Schlesinger’s theory that societies alternate between periods of liberalism (when public purpose is emphasized) and conservatism (when the focus is on private interests).  Other grand theories reject the presumption that history is cyclical.  Some focus on stasis (such as Robert Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy and John Lennon’s lament that, “Nothing’s going to change my world”).  Others see inevitable progress (all the great thinkers committed to the Enlightenment, including those like Hegel and Marx who emphasize the “dialectical” nature of that progress), and still others focus on “punctuated equilibrium” (for example, much current racial theory focusing on how progress toward racial toleration, integration, and multiculturalism suffers from periodic backlashes such as that which we are now experiencing, but then progress resumes).  Clinging to any one of these views of history requires very selective “cherry-picking” of historical events for illustrating – but never confirming – such theories.  In short, Bannon is credited with being Trump’s intellectual because he is a hedgehog, but his clinging to his particular cyclical theory makes him a mere ideologue, whose partisan ideas are never limited by an appreciation of different perspectives.

So, do only Berlin’s foxes – the many intellectuals like Aristotle, Balzac, and Berlin himself who criticize grand theories – have the open-mindedness of true philosophers?  Berlin is also well-known for being a pluralist, raising the question of whether  pluralism is just another grand theory, albeit one that emphasizes the complexity, diversity, and contingencies of life.   Whether Berlin’s pluralism makes him (and other pluralists) hedgehogs  depends on what constitutes a theory.  In the social sciences, theories are usually regarded as ideas that necessarily  simplify life, reduce its diversity to manageable elements, and seek some sort of predictability, and in this they reflect the hedgehog in most of us.  But such hedgehog tendencies among social scientists and public philosophers are usually accompanied by the humility that recognizes the limits of one’s particular theory.  Pluralists like Berlin are the hedgehogs who honor and appreciate foxes.  Pluralism is not a particular theory but a general perspective that emphasizes complexity, diversity and contingency, and  it is thus  a core element of any workable public philosophy.  Bannon is the anti-pluralist who peddles an oversimplified, monistic, and determinist worldview that can only cripple effective politics and governance.

The presidential campaigns during 2016 brought to public attention many flaws in the American electoral system.  During the winter and spring, we witnessed and tried to make sense of primary elections and caucuses conducted by various state-level Democratic and Republic parties.  We wondered why voters in such states as Iowa and New Hampshire should have such disproportionate influence, and we wondered why national party leaders had so little control over their party nominees, as most Republican leaders opposed Donald Trump and many Democratic leaders took Bernie Sanders at his own word that he was more a socialist than a Democrat.  The primaries revealed how America’s two major parties have little capacity to perform their most basic function: to nominate candidates who are well qualified to be president and have broad public appeal.  Even Republicans questioned Trump’s presidential temperament and Democrats were dismayed that public dislike of Hillary Clinton made her vulnerable to losing to a charlatan like Trump.

As we move toward the general election on November 8, most Americans are resigned to having to choose among “the lesser of two evils,” – or not voting at all or perhaps “wasting their vote” on a third party candidate like Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or the Green candidate Jill Stein (who have no chance of winning given how our electoral system has created a two-party duopoly).  Indeed, there is no certainty that the candidate who emerges with the most votes from this process will become our president, given the role that our archaic Electoral College plays in the process.  As in 2000, the person getting the most popular votes could lose in the Electoral College.

Under the Electoral College system, the third party candidates could also complicate determination of who is the least disliked candidate in two ways.  If enough voters in swing states vote for Johnson or Stein, even though they dislike Hillary much less than they dislike Donald, Trump could prevail in these states and ultimately in the Electoral College.  If Johnson (or Stein) could squeak out a victory in one or two states, perhaps neither Hillary nor Donald could capture a majority of electors in the College, and a Constitutionally-mandated “House Contingency” selection process would be required.  Even if Republicans retain control of the House, the high distrust of Trump among Republican leaders would make his selection uncertain.

In short, both the primary and general election system that is currently in place makes it highly questionable that our next President will be “acceptable” to most citizens; his or her legitimacy will be problematic.  Even if Hillary survives and is an effective president, our polarized politics and electoral rules mean that future elections are likely to be at least as troublesome as the current one.  While its too late to fix our system for this year’s election, its time to deliberate seriously about the changes that are needed to avoid future problems.

As November 8 approaches,  the possibility of an Electoral College outcome at odds with the popular vote will prompt many reformers to urge our adoption of the popular-plurality system used in most other American elections.  Whatever the merits of that reform, it has two major deficiencies.  It would apply only to the general election and do nothing to fix the problems with the party primaries.  And it would increase the chances of electing extremists and demagogues who could be despised by most citizens but could get more votes than mainstream candidates from angry citizens fed up with the failures of the major parties.

A better solution would be a two-stage national popular election.  In the first (primary) election, voters would cast approval ballots for any and all candidates that they found acceptable.  In the second (general) election, voters would rank-order their preferences  among the surviving candidates.

During the first stage, the ballot could be very long, as minimal rules could be established to qualify for listing on a single “primary” ballot, administered nationally rather than by the two parties in various states.  A wide variety of parties (the Republicans, the Democrats, the Libertarians,  the Greens, the America Firsters, the Tea Partiers, the Democratic Socialists, etc.) could organize and nominate whoever they wanted by whatever process they adopted,  and others who wanted to run but were not nominees of a party could organize and compete as well.  In this round, voters would cast an “approval ballot” in which they checked all acceptable candidates. The four or five candidates who were most approved would then participate in debates – presumably more civil and enlightening than those we have witnessed this year – prior to the general election.

In the second stage or general election, voters would rank-order those candidates who survived the first round and participated in the debates.   Voters could rank their genuine preferences above those who they might accept but did not really prefer.   If no candidate was the first choice of the majority of voters, the least popular nominees would be dropped and the lower-ranked preferences of their supporters would have their votes transferred instantly by computers programed to transfer votes to their most preferred remaining nominee until someone achieved a majority.  For example, if Johnson were your preferred candidate, but he came in third or forth in the initial tabulation of votes, your vote (along with the votes of other supporters of candidates getting lower initial support) would be transferred to your second (or perhaps third) choice. By this method, the winning candidate would acquire a majority and thus have a greater claim to legitimacy than a candidate getting a mere plurality. A candidate who had greater disapproval than approval ratings would have no chance of being selected, as voters need only rank-order those candidates acceptable to them.

Such a reform would require a constitutional amendment. Most incumbent Republicans and Democrats would oppose this method, because it would subject them to more competition. But it’s a reform that could have a great deal of public support.  The candidacies of Trump, Cruz, and Sanders have revealed widespread voter frustration and anger with the dysfunction of our two-party system. And moderate Democrats and Republicans now have good reasons to fear that their parties are being taken over by ideological radicals. The ranked-choice system would give parties and candidates incentives to run for office and act in office in ways that are acceptable to the principles and preferences of most voters, and it would give voters an opportunity to express their sincere preferences.

Although it’s too late for this electoral cycle, we ought to begin thinking about reforms that address the serious problems with both our primary and general elections.  An extended public conversation involving both experts in electoral systems and voters fed up with the current system could well lead to consensus on selecting the president using approval ballots in primary and rank-order voting in the general elections.