Sunday, November 2, 2008

Political rant

O.K., here are my suggestions for campaign reform. First, limit campaigning to two months before the primaries, two months between the conventions and Election Day (actually, maybe we should get rid of the conventions, since they leave third party candidates out of the process). Everyone, I’m sure, is as sick as I am of political ads every five minutes on the radio and T.V., of the snide and often misleading substance of many of those ads, of all the phone calls that are either polls (this will take only a few minutes of your time) or recordings of people “asking for your vote,” of the people who come knocking at your door, clipboard in hand, asking for your vote. We should limit the amount of time we have to put up with this stuff.

And all campaigning should stop one week before Election Day. No more ads, or phone calls, or emails, or people knocking on your door. One week in which the ten or twelve people who are still undecided can decide, in peace, whom they are going to vote for, and the candidates and their volunteers can all have some much-needed rest.

We should outlaw people calling you on the phone to make their political pitches. I feel as invaded by them as I do by telemarketers, and we now have rules in place (the Do Not Call Register) that limit their access to us in the privacy of our homes.

I think candidates should be required to use public funding for their campaigns. I was very disappointed in Barak Obama for saying he would go that route, and then changing his mind. If, as he says, the system is “broken” it should be fixed, but there should not be this gross disparity between what two candidates are able to spend on their campaigns. Presumably what primarily needs “fixing” is regulation of 527 groups. For anyone who’s as ignorant of what such groups are as I was, they’re political action groups with a difference – they may not contribute directly to a specific politician’s campaign, but may contribute unlimited amounts in support of issues, ads for which can be oriented in support or opposition of a candidate. Supposedly concern about the kind of money these groups could raise (for McCain) contributed to Obama’s decision to opt out of public funding. It’s apparently harder to regulate these groups, because of First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. But it should be possible to determine who contributes how much to these groups, and to cap individual amounts, just as is the case with regular PACs.

And then there’s the matter of pie in the sky campaign promises. Both candidates stuck to their original script about what they would do once in office, even after the world changed with the financial crisis. Both were asked more than once in the debates (which by the way should be limited to two presidential and one vice-presidential – another needed reform – since three just gives them a third time to repeat all the same stuff yet again) what would have to “give,” given the new financial reality, but neither would say. But then, they both knew people did not want to hear, 'you're right, we won’t be able to do this, or that, at least not as soon as we’d hoped; because things are going to be very difficult for a while, for the whole country.' They both knew that what most people want to hear in times of crisis is 'don’t worry, things are going to be all right, just elect me and you’ll see.' So of course our candidates stuck to what was politically viable, rather than voicing unpleasant realities.

My goddaughter has applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. As part of the application process she had to come up with a research project that she would work on at Oxford University, should she get the scholarship. Her proposed project has to do with investigating to what extent campaign promises are met by candidates, once they are elected, and to what extent, if any, different countries hold candidates accountable for their campaign promises. What a good idea! Having a law that requires candidates to fulfill (at least some!) of their campaign promises. Would it result in a little more honesty during campaigns, an acknowledgment of political realities that would have to be dealt with by whoever was elected?

But then again, would the majority of us want to hear what was real, what was true?

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