It seems rather odd, to me at least, to allow the kind of spending that goes on in political campaigns. In a recent New York Times article, it was noted that the two remaining Democratic candidates, namely Sens. Clinton and Obama (in case you have been living in a hole for the past few months), have raised a combined total of over $80 million this past month. That’s around 75 million cups of coffee, or 25,396,825.4 gallons of gasoline at the current national average, or roughly the price of Dick Cheney’s new and improved life size action figure, complete with shotgun, bird shot, and glass of water to make Bush stop talking.
I digress. The point is that there is just too much darn money in these campaigns, and I see it hurting our country. But how, praytell, can too much money hurt a country? Most folks are of the opinion that “too much money” is a completely made-up term created by those who did not have money in the first place, or something along those lines. However, it is not the candidates that have the money, but rather the donors.
Every campaign needs donors, whether it is for the Presidency of the United States or a public school’s PTA elections. The problem with donors: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Let’s take one of the biggest lobbies in the country: Big Tobacco. The manufacturers of a product that we know, as a fact, has no beneficial purpose, and is known to directly cause cancer. Any rational society would think, “umm….maybe…and this is just a thought, here….but maybe we should stop selling things that kill taxpayers.” However, Big Tobacco also happens to have a lot of money; money that can be used to help out a candidate, like the candidate who promises to keep our kids smoking Camel’s and our seniors on oxygen tanks, all for the quick and almighty dollar.
Welcome to the world of American politics.
But don’t candidates need the money to run successful campaigns? Signs cost money. New suits cost money. Advisers cost a lot of money. So do t-shirts, buttons, hand-wipes (since shaking the hands and kissing the babies of the nation leaves one at the mercy of the germ-gods….), food, housing, a campaign bus, gas for the bus, etc. Commercials are expensive. But what would happen if all we heard about the political process was the issues from the debates, and the articles in the paper? That cuts out all the advertising, all the buttons and t-shirts, and certainly cuts the cost of hand sanitizers dramatically.
Why don’t we do that? Simple: The American public is just too darn lazy to pick up a paper and read about the issues. We want our candidates to choke us on their ads, beat us with their signs and slogans, and eventually we end up picking the wrong guy (or perhaps in this case, girl…) for the job. It’s time to make a change.
In this country, the land of opportunity, and of equality, we are slowly watching our former republic dwindle away into a disillusioned plutocracy of hereditary hedge-fund owners and a couple of progressive idealists who are, on the greater scale, ignored.
Want to make a change? Read something. Talk politics with strangers. Save that $10 that you were going to spend on a campaign bumper sticker, and then you could eat one of the 75 million donuts with one of the 75 million cups of coffee, sitting next to your favorite new live-action hero, the Incredible John Q. Public, and know you made a difference.
About Sean J. Palmer
You are the brick! Reading stuff like this written in the way like this is a great pleasure for me.