Election cycle too long

It’s difficult to comprehend and accept that in 2016 the United States, with a population of 325 million, can offer only two deeply flawed presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

In 1789, when our nation was formed and our first president chosen, and with only 3 million population, we had a long list of strong and competent political leaders, including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Hancock to choose from to be our first president.

Many factors contribute to the lack of strong and competent presidential candidates, but first among those is our perpetual election cycle, which discourages well-qualified people who could significantly contribute to our nation. They choose not to participate in the never-ending electoral circus as they do not want to expose themselves and their families to a multi -year process. As a comparison, John Kennedy declared his candidacy for the November 1960 presidential election only 10 months earlier, in January 1960.

Unless we return to a more reasonable time frame, where the new election cycle does not begin the day after the current election, the process will continue to discourage the best candidates and promote mediocre or worse candidates such as we have this year.

This story was originally published September 2, 2016 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Election cycle too long."