It’s impossible to tell at this point what the shakedown from the grand Trump experiment will be, but one thing is painfully clear—if the United States manages to survive this turmoil intact (and especially if it doesn’t), it is time to make some changes to our system of government. No offense to the constitution—we have definitely made it a long way on this nearly 250 year old document—but it seems absurd at this modern point in time that we need to let ourselves be constrained by the ideas and motivations of a handful of 18th century land (and slave) owners. Even the founders themselves understood that to remain relevant, our constitution would need to experience some changes over time, and the ability to do exactly that was written into the rules from the start—it’s time we started exercising this responsibility.

Now, I will be periodically offering a number of different ideas here over the next few months, but this is the first in the series, so it’s best to start with the elephant in the room.

Aside from a few minor bug fixes (the militia fiasco, or the misguided inclusion of the word “felon”, to name a few), first and foremost the most important major structural flaw in our current constitution is the office of the presidency. Sure, it feels natural and impressive to have one person in charge of everything, kind of like a temporary king, but does it make for good governance? Even when we have a skilled person in the job, in a partisan political system the role is too divisive, too large, and causes too much damage when it inevitably flips back and forth from one pole to the other. But when we get someone unfit for the job, it becomes a nightmare—an extinction level danger for the human race and for the nation. In any other aspect of life we have learned to spread out our risks—we diversify our retirement portfolios or refrain from only planting a single crop—but somehow in politics we have become used to putting all our eggs into a single basket. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Essentially the president’s role is to preside over the various cabinet positions, each of which runs a different part of our government’s executive branch. The solution here is easy and obvious; simply eliminate the presidency and replace it with the cabinet. So we would have a secretary of defense that runs the defense department, a secretary of state that runs the state department, a secretary of energy, a secretary of education, and so on. Each of these would be subject to the same rules as the president and could be impeached if necessary if they are derelict in their duties or criminal in their actions. This simple change would decentralize power, eliminating the one side takes all aspect of our democracy.

Now of course, there are a few other special powers the president has that are not carried by the cabinet. Primarily, these are the veto, appointment of judges, nuclear codes, and the pardon. Also, there is the aspect of needing a “head of state” to meet with foreign governments and the like, though this can (and should) easily be handled by the secretary of state.

Most of these powers can be easily divided. Nuclear codes (whether it even makes sense to have these anymore is a different topic) can be passed to the secretary of defense. The pardon (again, of questionable virtue), can easily be passed to the attorney general.

With the veto, there are a few options here. The most obvious answer is to let the various cabinet members vote on legislation, and to veto it when the majority is against it. That could work, though it might also be a better idea to have the supreme court simply review all new legislation and reject bills that do not fit with the constitution.

Finally, as for judicial appointments, it is probably best to allow the courts to appoint justices themselves. Judges in lower courts are elected, and can easily nominate one of their own and vote on upper court appointments. This both eliminates a major source of conflict, and eliminates the problem of unqualified people being appointed to important bench positions.

The main goal here is to simply eliminate having a single person responsible for everything. And of course, if one person did happen to go rogue, they would never be able to leverage or scuttle all of the powers of government to keep themselves in power; it would be quite easy for the other cabinet members to shut them down and for congress to remove them.

Now, while it is certainly possible that we could simply have multiple federal elections for these new positions, it might be a good idea here to try to eliminate our deeply flawed federal elections entirely in the process, saving the country and the people an immeasurable amount of money, time, energy, and stress. My proposal would be that each of these cabinet-level positions would be four-year terms that could only be filled, when vacant, by sitting members of congress (or the incumbent). Basically, when a position becomes available, members of congress can throw their hats into the ring, and then after a period of no more than a week or two, congress votes amongst themselves to select one of the candidates. The winner steps down from his congressional seat, names someone to fill his post (no more special elections, too, thank you), and takes on the new role.

Of course, cabinet elections should be staggered from year to year so that not all positions get filled by the same congress. For similar reasons, this system would work best in a multi-party or no-party system, but when all elections have become local elections, it will be significantly easier for third parties to work their way into the mix.

If this sounds untried and true, don’t despair quite yet; keep in mind this process is nothing new… it’s actually quite close to how most modern democracies fill positions like Prime Minister and such. Although since this is America, we could surely throw our own twist into the mix, like by allowing state Governors or the like to throw their hats into the cabinet rings. However, nobody should be able to qualify that has not served at least one term in government at some level. People need to learn the ropes before they can steer the ship.

Anyway, all of this is merely my own suggestion for tackling our problems; there are doubtless infinite other solutions out there, and probably a few better ones as well, but one thing is infinitely clear—we must never allow one single person to ever wield this much power again. So start talking about it; get your ideas out there; start pushing for institutional change. It is imperative that we solve this problem now, before the flickering flame of democracy becomes a snuffed-out distant memory. We may be deep in a time of crisis, but that is also the only time in which any kind of large fundamental change is possible.