Steve Kraske: Making the world a better place in a few easy steps

Just give me five minutes and I’ll clean it all up. The government, politics, all of it.

So if I were the grand poobah of the world, I would:

Change second terms of presidents and governors to two-year miniterms.

Four-year second terms have proved to be a wasteland time and time again. Relations between chief executives and legislative leaders fray. Fresh ideas evaporate. The public wearies of the personality in chief.

Cases in point: President Barack Obama’s term two and the declining state of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s second four years.

Our country and state face too many issues not to inject fresh energy more often.

Expand advance voting. Making it easier to vote should be universally regarded as a good thing, but Missouri Republicans remain dug in.

Make it 10 days prior to Election Day, Saturdays and Sundays included.

Then require anybody who didn’t vote to dye their hair purple for a week so we can all kick ’em in the shins.

Yank the power of redrawing congressional and legislative districts out of the hands of the politicians. Give it to an independent commission of retired judges.

They would draw boundary lines based on population shifts and not to make it easier to re-elect incumbents.

There is no single magic bullet — term limits, third parties or anything else — that will make our democracy function better. That said, this might be the biggest step toward returning moderation to our politics.

Emphasize disclosure. Those who donate to independent campaign ads — say, $2,000 or more — need to crawl out from under their rocks and reveal who they are.

Also, the IRS could enforce its own rules on nonprofit 501(c)(4) organizations to end the ongoing use of sham groups to hide donor identities.

Shove the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire presidential primary from January all the way to April or May.

The GOP is now claiming to do all of us a huge favor by pushing Iowa back to February. That’s not enough for campaigns that everyone agrees are way too long.

Require candidates for federal office, governor and mayor to take part in at least three debates no matter the strength of the opponent. The rule would apply to primaries, too.

Voters deserve it, and that would avoid the silly dance that Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts is now performing as he seeks to skip a showdown with Milton Wolf.

I’ve got more, and maybe you do, too. Send them to me.

This story was originally published June 20, 2014 at 3:30 PM.