It doesn’t work of course. Politicians are in your schools, your churches, and your police stations. They’ll get your kids, one way or another.
Presidential elections terrify me. Our American political process is so bloated and corrupt. Tempers run high. The country is too big; we’re all too different. No single candidate can satisfy even 51% of us, and for people like me, with political views so far out of the mainstream that no one ever represents us, it’s just a farce. The money wasted is just a slap in the face. How many people could be fed, clothed, and housed for the nearly one billion dollars that a couple of billionaires focused on increasing their own assets casually promised to their favorite candidate?
The worst part is the campaigning. It’s not confined to any arena. It’s everywhere, and you can’t escape it, even if you want to. In the last election, I literally couldn’t figure out how to make Google News stop showing me election news. I strongly believe in compartmentalizing, but it’s not possible in presidential elections. Everyone has opinions and everyone shares them everywhere. You can’t not hear the mudslinging and muckraking and empty promises and bombastic bloviation.
It used to be considered in poor taste to discuss politics outside of political gatherings. Now it’s considered ignorant to not constantly spew your views regardless of whether or not people care to hear them. When you ask people to change the subject, they refuse.
I’d like to see some actual degree of democracy in the political process. The way I see it, it would be most fair to lay things out like this: anyone can establish a candidacy with a certain number of signatures on a petition, but all interested individuals would have to attain their own signatures in the same forum. No advertising in any other forum would be allowed, and in the first round, only position statements could be displayed. People would have to go to this political forum to determine which candidates interested them. Then, there would be a series of run-offs to limit the number of candidates to a reasonable degree, after which each viable candidate would be allotted the exact same amount of money to produce whatever campaign materials they needed, all of which could only be distributed through the same political forum: videos, pamphlets, ads. Debates would all be held on the same forum. We could all vote there, online, as well.
It’s the only non-disgusting way I can see it working. Right now what we’ve got is something between an oligarchy and a plutocracy, and it’s not working. Right now, we’d be seriously better off running the presidential campaign like American Idol or Survivor. It would be far more dignified than what we’re going to be subjected to in the next 18 1/2 months.
qwertyvsdvorak 
Good thinking. I would add that we need many more than 2 viable parties in this country. If they have to end up in coalitions, have to end up working together, the election process could be less crazy. Do they think we’re idiots (apparently), that they can’t talk about where they agree and disagree, instead of making themselves opposed in extremis? I like the shielding with boards visual metaphor and that kitty has understood that she must help.
I would eliminate parties entirely. In theory, people might form coalitions, but in practice, have you seen Israeli politics? They have like 50 parties, and sometimes they form useful coalitions, but just as often nothing gets done. Individuals govern; individuals should run. But maybe we should try a coalition of presidents, say, 7 or 9, each with different bailiwicks, and sometimes they could make their own decisions and sometimes 2 or more would have to make the decisions (a presidential court could determine whose responsibility certain issues were) and there would be designated tie breakers.
This (7 or 9) presidents w their own bailiwicks begins to sound like what I favor most–breaking up the USA into several countries, an idea worthy of sci-fi. When I lived in tiny Denmark (which incidentally has fairly successful coalitions IMO), I realized that so many of our problems here result from bigness.