{"id":14258,"date":"2020-03-02T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=14258"},"modified":"2020-11-17T11:32:54","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T18:32:54","slug":"smoke-filled-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=14258","title":{"rendered":"Smoke Filled Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"14259\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?attachment_id=14259\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?fit=1678%2C2560&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1678,2560\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;1.8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;iPhone 11 Pro Max&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1581869072&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;4.25&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;32&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00049188391539597&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"IMG_1331\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?fit=671%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331.jpeg?resize=294%2C449&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14259\" width=\"294\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?resize=671%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 671w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?resize=197%2C300&amp;ssl=1 197w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C1171&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?resize=1007%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1007w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?w=1678&amp;ssl=1 1678w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_1331-scaled.jpeg?w=1400&amp;ssl=1 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 294px) 100vw, 294px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cIt\u2019s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Headline from an OpEd in the Washington Post.  Which they later changed because of lots of criticism. Four years ago I agreed with this sentiment. Donald Trump was on the way to being the Republican choice in large part because the primary system is broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not sure where we are going to get the smoke, but filling some rooms with it and having some smart politicians choose the best available candidate who has a chance of winning sounded pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--nextpage-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I remembered this quote from Al Smith: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cAll the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I came up with the idea of using a format like The Voice where judges help shape opinion but the ultimate choice is the people. Starting with regional auditions and eliminations and then going national at 15 or 20 participants. With the campaigns having weekly projects. Like &#8220;Present a one minute video on your experience.&#8221; or Talk about Foreign Policy.&#8221;  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps a state party could do it as a trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Photo is of a Crested Saguaro in Saguaro National Forest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt\u2019s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president.\u201d Headline from an OpEd in the Washington Post. Which they later changed because of lots of criticism. Four years ago I agreed with this sentiment. Donald Trump was on the way to being the Republican choice in large part because the primary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[311,586],"class_list":["post-14258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics","tag-saguaro"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/D9809E71-C7FF-4B67-A441-8DDC4DA407A6.jpeg?fit=467%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-3HY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14260,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14258\/revisions\/14260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}