Apologies, I misread what you wrote, my bad.
As for the rest of it, you're presuming that no one votes with any understanding of the issues. I disagree, though many don't understand them deeply, or possibly misunderstand, people don't vote unless they care about some of the issues. That's why most people don't even vote. So those who do are certainly doing it because they want some objectives met or some ideology upheld.
I've worked at many companies and I've been an employee of the federal government and quite frankly, the federal government is vastly more efficient than most private companies as far as I can tell.
Sure, if you look at the fortune 500 the government might look incompetent, but that's not a fair comparison, those are the top companies in the market. If you look at the fortune 5 million, i.e. the vast majority of the rest of the market, the federal government comes out looking quite efficient.
Having been in the military, there's just a certain difference in the way you look at your job when you've worked in a place where you completely divorce pay and work. Pay... that's the finance department on the other side of base, it has nothing to do with your job or your performance, only with your rank.
At work, you just don't think about pay at all, you think only about your job and being good at what you do out of pride for what you do rather than how much money you can make. Every one knows exactly what everyone else makes, it's printed in the stripes on your arm and a standard pay scale. This allows a commradare that generally doesn't exist in the private sector because jealousy over pay interferes with it.
It's totally different than the civilian world where most keep their salaries secret, or lie about them, and everyone is stepping all over each other trying to make more money than the next guy, by any means necessary, quality of the work be damned because manipulating people seems to work better when climbing the ladder.
The last thing I want in a president is a guy who thinks the seeking of profit trumps all else, because it doesn't. This idea that seeking profit automatically results in the most good I just find absurd. Frankly, the idea that being a great CEO somehow prepares you to be a great president I also find silly.
Great CEO's != great person, in fact more often than not being a great CEO requires being ruthless. That's not what I want in a president, I want a great person as president, someone who I can morally look up to, someone who takes responsibility for his actions, is honest with the public, someone who leads by example, not by privilege of power. Someone I can point to and tell my kids, that's how to be a man.
The only potential discipline for politicians is made by voters who mostly don't understand the issues that well and don't spend a lot of time following their representatives in office. Thus, the job of a politician is largely PR.
This, again, is in stark contrast to the creditors of a corporation, who are very interested in its actions, follow it very closely, have very clear expectations, and who have deep knowledge of its activities.
I know I am not going to convince you, but I think my point is good and my logic is sound.
>"Not going to happen and you know it."
My sentence had a fairly large phrase in the middle. If it is removed, it reads "I suggest that firing the current crop of executives...is a good way to run the company into the ground". Although, I suspect it is likely that AIG is already beyond salvage.