What happend to Statesmen?

Our founders, as great and as visionary as they were didn't see our long standing party politics coming. Fortunately they did come up with the most versatile democratic system to date. Their ability to take 13 colonies with at first virtually no chance of throwing off the mother country, then taking 13 very independent countries into to a small federal republic on the edge of civilization, paving the way for it to become the greatest nation in the annals of great nations. The United States of America dominates every sphere it enters. The USA dominates land, sea, air and space. We are the financial and business center of the world and our culture is spreading the world over (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are.) McDonald's, that American icon, is found in 119 countries and no country with a McDonald's has ever attacked the US. But we must remember history, no great civilization has ever been destroyed from without, but crumbled from within.

Let me share a story:

When I was 19 I voted for the first time in Hyattsville, MD. I had to walk to the school where the voting was due to lack of parking (no, I don't deserve a medal, but I did get a sticker.) I knew everything there was to know about the presidential candidates but on the local level I didn't have a clue. I had only just moved there and really didn't know or care about local politics. Luckily they came with a (D) or a (R) after their name so I knew how to vote. When it came to some of them, like judges, they didn't have a little (D) or (R) so utterly confused as to what to do I either did eni mini mo or left them blank.

We have a two party system in this country today run by politicians. Politicians have screwed this country over, big time. The need to get a (R) or (D) created the need to pay homage to the party elites and the corruption, partisanship and enforcement of the party line stifles patriotic fervor, selflessness and compromise. Our two party system, simply strangles statesmen and turns them into politicians. My favorite Congressional leadership position are the Party Whips. Party Whips are responsible for getting the members of the party to vote with the party. I am not sure how they go about that but that is where the name, Whips, comes from.

The founders risked all they had to create and serve their countrymen, even before there was a country. They were statesmen everyone, not doing it for personal gain or personal power but for the betterment of mankind. We live in a nation created by statesmen and run by politicians. If we are so great run by scoundrel politicians what would we be under more Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adams, Franklins or Handcocks?

"What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character
in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of
virtuous actions." -Aristotle