Theodore J. Lowi is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions and a core faculty member of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA). The following piece appeared in CIPA's spring 2008 newsletter and is reprinted here with permission by the author as well as the institute.

Politics is full of paradox, and nothing is more paradoxical than the American method of electing our president. The process is admirable, the most wide-open, transparent, democratic procedure for the selection and transference of power that has ever been contrived or conceived, at least since Machiavelli, who was the first modern political consultant. But there's the paradox -- or, to impose on Hamlet, there's the rub: The more transparent the presidential election process, the more ignorant is the national electorate as to the direction the victorious party is likely to embrace.

This is not a new phenomenon. But it is more confounding and mystifying today, given all the information and the mechanics of delivery. Take Lincoln and the 1860 election. It was a wide-open, three-candidate Convention, chock-full of information about emancipation, empire, union. But from July through November and on to the inauguration in March (the traditional beginning of the term), Lincoln made no public addresses despite President Buchanan's urgent appeals to take the lead. Likewise, FDR, who campaigned against Hoover as a Big Spender with FDR in favor of a balanced budget! No voters could have known they were voting for a "Roosevelt Revolution." Or take Ike, who ran against the New Deal's "creeping socialism" but, after election, made no effort to terminate a single New Deal program. On up to Richard Nixon, who implemented the Democratic agenda, Bill Clinton, who implemented the Republican agenda, and George W., who went from a promise of moderation to big government conservatism.

How's all that for an "informed electorate"? It turns out that we of the 21st century are confronting pathology in American democracy. Just like the ghost of Hamlet's father, pathology makes its first appearance as paradox. And pathology needs a doctor, a role that political science ought to play. The diagnosis: We have lots of knowledge, but of the wrong kind. As the old public administration guys used to put it, "We are fit in an unfit fitness."

Now that we have the diagnosis we can proceed to treatment and cure. Our guide should be E.E. Cummings: "There's a helluva good universe next door; let's go." And in this case, next door is England and, for that matter, every other parliamentary system.

Until March 2008, I thought I was the only political junkie who remembered Ronald Reagan's quixotic effort to bump Gerald Ford off the presidential ticket in 1976 by naming, weeks before the election, moderate Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Richard Schweiker as his vice presidential running mate. It didn't have any traction in 1976, and it was mainly forgotten, except for tinkerers like me. Schweiker was chosen for the same reason every vice presidential nominee is chosen, to help carry a wavering state. But, as ingenious as the idea was, a pre-electoral designation was too alien for Americans. We take pride in our system as a beacon, a model to be emulated. But we have neither the knowledge nor the inclination to adopt any practices from other models, even from our nearest sister state, Great Britain. Now's the time. Westminster, here we come.

This doctor's prescription is a small dose of parliamentarism. It is indeed inspired by the Reagan ploy, but that won't work, for at least two reasons. First, the vice presidency is an electoral office, and the president can't fire him later on. Second, the addition of just one pre-convention, pre-election candidate provides just too little information about the probable direction of the new administration.

But suppose instead that the doctor enlarges the dosage, so that the presidential candidate designates before the Convention his/her cabinet nominees. It need not be for all the seats in the cabinet but would have to be a number substantial enough to convey through the cabinet members the real agenda the victorious president and party will pursue. That is the whole purpose of this dipping into parliamentarism -- to define the administration with a genuine commitment sufficient for voters to make their choices.

This chore would in no way reduce the stature of the new president or his/her discretion in those many instances of unanticipated challenges. In other words, election with a pre-electoral cabinet is not a referendum. The president can fire a recalcitrant cabinet member, and, of greater importance, any cabinet member can resign if the direction of that administration departs too far from the original, albeit implied, commitments. Resignations over policy differences are far too infrequent in the U.S. This is one of the hidden benefits of the more parliamentary, pre-electoral cabinet.

There is still time for the contestants to take the dosage. And, if one of them put forward a pre-electoral cabinet (as a set of "running mates"), it would be virtually impossible for the others to resist. And it would elevate the presidency and American democracy far above the low stature toward which our system has been declining. And if nothing comes of this, its contrast with the present system will bring forward not only other reform proposals but also an incentive to look with a more critical eye toward the present electoral process.

A copy of this modest proposal will be sent to the consultants of each of the three candidates. See how they'll run!