Last week I made my second political donation ever and it immediately dawned on me what a dumb idea that was. Why should any of us fund a campaign?
How is a campaign funded by the people any different than one funded by lobbyists, big business and blue bloods? The candidate funded by the former may not be as beholden to contributors, but in either case, the election is still being purchased.
And what do we the people get for that money? Smear attacks, intentionally misleading information and/or outright lies about the opponent’s intentions and a distillation of talking points into a 30-second television spot rather than a discourse on real beliefs and ideas.
(To put it into perspective: spending for the 2008 presidential election alone is going to top 1/700th of what it apparently costs to bail out the financial industry or it could fund a war in Iraq for 3 days 2 hours and 24 minutes.)
If we ceased all advertising for political purposes (even and especially 527s) what would we be left with?
Put the politicians back on whistle-stop tours. But, not being a total Luddite, I would also like to still see them debate, blog, vlog and tweet (if they must). The difference is pulling versus pushing the message. In this new world, only the people who cared would get it.
And I cannot believe I am going to publicly admit this, but George Will and I share a belief. In a diatribe about early voting he says, ‘…surely the quality of the electoral turnout declines when the quantity is increased…’ That is true of everything, not just voting. As soon as you broaden the circle beyond experts you are going to dilute the quality of a decision.
Now, I will not advocate eliminating early voting, but I think limiting how the ‘presidential’ messages get out will effectively limit voting. After all, the politicians can no longer police themselves. We have officially arrived at the point where one of the parties believes that if they say something enough times it makes it true. And the rest of us do not care enough to actually learn the truth. Instead, we rely on biting sound clips, false Internet chain letters, 30-second lies and ranting radio talk-show host buffoons. Our reward? A collective dumbing down of the process, our leaders and our country.
I do not want to disenfranchise anyone. But there should be some litmus test. So long as they care enough to look behind the curtain they should vote. This is not a red/blue thing or a rich/poor thing. This is an American thing. This is about getting people more involved in the process.
A great country should be ruled by a set of ideals (which we used to have), not by the emotionally manipulative and misleading crap we see on television.
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Public Service: Check the facts about the claims you hear.
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