Well I'm supposing that the federal government has a fair lot more power than states do, so if presidents were elected directly by the population, then the federal executive would leave the powerless smaller states out in the cold. Devolving some powers (like, I dunno, dissolving the dept. of education) to the states would limit the directly-elected president's powers.
Well, the small states have their disproportionately large federal representation in the form of their Senators. My view is that the president is supposed to represent America and the American public as a whole, and really doesn't have anything to do with representing states, so I'm not really concerned about the possibility that he might care less about Montana vs. California or what-have-you if he was directly elected. I really don't see the interests of the smaller states as being protected by how much the president cares about them in the first place. I would rather that all voters have an equal hand in choosing the president, instead of voters from different states having their votes be valued differently for the sake of inflating the electoral importance of thinly populated states.
Bottom line, I don't see direct election of the president meaningfully reducing the role of small states at the federal level.
Last edited by Syme; 04-20-2009 at 11:24 PM.
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