This is long overdue, but here’s my continuation on presidential campaigns. I spoke briefly in the last post about the amount of money being pumped into presidential campaigns. Most of this money is used to slander the opposing candidate. Where does it come from? A fair portion is provided by third party sources hoping to gain an influence on the future decisions of said candidate should the individual become president. First off, just because someone provides funding for a person’s campaign doesn’t mean they need to honor the donation with later legislation. The donater provided the candidate with the money because they thought they were the best person to promote their interests. That means they respect whatever decision the candidate makes when in office. It is like hiring a head football coach for a college program. When that is done, the school is putting its faith in the individual to lead the program as best as he sees fit. If that means when the game is on the line that he chooses to go for the 2-pt conversion to win the game instead of kicking the extra point and going to overtime, the school needs to accept that. They don’t expect the coach to ask them what they think he should do in said situation. They’re paying him to make the right decision. If in the long run, they determine he is not the best choice, they may remove him for another coach. If a campaign funder determines their candidate is no longer the best choice for future elections, they can support another individual. Still, the candidate has no reason to alter their decisions based on who provided them with cash. I know this isn’t likely to happen seeing how corrupt individuals are and how much they like to play the game for themselves, but I can hope there are still some decent people out there.
Secondly, we spend millions, if not billions, of dollars on advertising, et cetera, for these campaigns. Then we decide the government is in debt and people are starving. Why not make the presidential campaigns more useful than seeing who can throw the most money to push their public image? There are a couple different directions this can go in. The first is to limit the amount permitted to be spent on the campaign. This option allows those with lesser finances to actually stand a chance in the campaign. They don’t have to own an oil company to pay for their election. Then feel the need to influence the market in favor of their holdings to make up for their losses. The second direction is to put a stipulation that any money spent on the campaign must be matched to charities, taxes, et cetera. At least this way, all the money thrown into an individual’s election would be providing some service to the general public because right now the commercials just annoy me rather than provide any sort of service.
I doubt any sort of policies along these lines will be accepted any time soon. Still, I think they could greatly improve the usefulness of presidential elections. While the Roman bureaucracy had plenty of corruption, they use to make individuals fund their election campaigns on their own. Then when they served in office, they received no compensation. This was because it was seen as the responsibility of the more fortunate to provide and care for those without as much. I think there are times when this vision is lost in our current politics. The United States Constitution was founded on these ideals. Every individual involved in the Continental Congresses and the early national conventions were well educated in the politics of the Greeks and Romans. Maybe our school systems need to spend a little more time focusing on these aspects than telling us how bad the cold war era was.
This is the first of a series about presidential campaigns in the United States. Quite frankly, there’s a lot of things about them that bother me. Today, I will discuss the pointlessness of the campaigns. Afterall, the entire intention of the campaigns is to allow the common populace to learn about the various candidates that they might make an informed decision for the next President of the United States. How do the campaigns accomplish this? They use a handful of debates accompanied with a billion commercials.
Now the commercials I must say serve absolutely no purpose other than to line the pockets of the advertisements’ producers and the media companies which distribute them to the masses. Most of the time, these commercials consist of a load of lies and slanders. I cannot say that I have ever learned anything about an individual from a commercial. Commercials are useful for brand(name) recognition. Everyone already knows the names of the presidential candidates. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be voting in the first place. Commercials do not inform the masses about the character of the company in the advertisement. For this, we go to other sources. So what other sources do we have to get to know our political candidates?
The candidates travel the country competing in a series of debates aired on national television. Once again, money pours into the hosting city, the hosting venue, and the media. At least in this case, most of it does not come directly from the presidential candidates themselves. At least it could be said it provides a small boost to the economy. However, how much is learned from these debates? Many times, our candidates get so caught up in competing with their counterpart that their focus ends up more on attacking the last thing they said than speaking truthfully of their opinions on the topic at hand.
Honestly, we could probably learn more about the candidates by having them write a weekly blog. It would be cheaper (I will get into the monetary considerations in a later blog). It would also allow the masses to learn more about the political topics of the day than a few hours of debate. Think of it in another light. When you take a college history class, you are assigned a textbook to read. You do not listen to two professors debate whether the Greeks or the Romans influenced western civilization more. I would prefer to read a well-organized explanation of a candidate’s viewpoints on the “War on Terror” than let them bicker for an hour about how each intends to remove US involvement in a timely manner (whatever that is supposed to mean).
These are the reasons you will find I hardly follow the presidential campaigns. I could spend hours upon hours to learn very little that is likely false the moment the candidate is elected anyways. For this reason, I spend my time working on more constructive projects. For now, the best option I can offer is making the best guess one can on a candidate and then to let the individual’s actions in office speak for an future opinion I form for the next election.