Representative Cawthorn

I thought about this some more and really like the idea after further thought. Right now the electoral college is about 1/5 undemocratic. We have had too many Presidents elected lately that lost the popular vote because of this 1/5 undemocratic factor. Doubling the house would reduce this undemocratic factor to about 1/10.

 

I really enjoyed President Carter: The White House Years by Stuart Eizenstat, one of Carter's domestic advisors. It paints a very complex picture of his 4 years, with a lot of accomplishments that didn't really get attention later, and a number of failures that it painted as a direct result of Jimmy Carter's stubbornness. I really don't know anything about GHW's Presidency at all, save the first Gulf War and the "read my lips, no new taxes" you mentioned.

Interestingly, I've just started into War Within: A Secret White House History (2006-2008) by Bob Woodward about the second Gulf War and it paints George W as having Carter's kind of stubbornness. He had a specific vision and was really resistant to anything the Generals had to say about how to effectively fight counterinsurgency. They had all the answers in front of them about how to effectively fight the war (including specific examples where Generals didn't focus their time in a city on racking up a "body count" but instead on rebuilding infrastructure and using the military to secure the place so that people go about their lives), but they couldn't convince Bush.

In GHW's invasion of Iraq they started with 500,000 troops, while GWB's invasion involved the comparatively small 150,000. Enough to get the locals angry but not enough to actually secure and hold the country.