Coventional Wisdom

Being the political junkie that I am, I watched the GOP convention last week and nerdily took notes. Basically, the idea was that I wanted to remember what Bush was saying he wanted to do for our country and to contrast that with what Kerry was saying. Interestingly enough, the other OTHER candidate, Nader, had a convention last week as well, but no one covered it, and I caught him speaking on C-Span while I was bored flipping channels. Kind of interesting how the Republicans can drop $38 million on a convention, the Dems can drop about the same, and they get national coverage in prime time on all major news networks from CNN to FoxNews and Nader didn't even get mentioned as an afterthought on any major news network. It lends some credence to his claims about blatant discrimination against any 3rd party candidate. Personally, since I think Bush is an unpresentable moron and Kerry is a disgusting medal-pimping yes-man, I'd like to see a little more openness towards intelligent challengers with real vision and motivation than our current system allows. As Nader pointed out, getting on the ballot isn't easy. You have to petition to get accepted (the GOP and Dems don't have to) in every state, then you have to raise money for your cause which will be seen as a longshot and not worthy of investment.

And since I'm talking about difficulties involved in getting third-party representation on the ballot, Nader pointed out an interesting tactic that was employed against his volunteers that has the stylings of Hillary's "vast right-wing conspiracy." In fact, what happened was that a 58 year old grandmother was volunteering to collect signatures for a petition to get on the primary ballots in one of the western states. One night at dinner with her grandchildren, two lawyers knocked on her door and informed her, probably in a tone more closely resembling a warning or a threat, that to collect false signatures on a petition was a crime punishable by three years in jail for each offense. As most petition signature collectors know, anyone can sign anyone's name at any time and you'd naturally assume they were legitimate when they weren't. She was so scared, she wrote to Nader to apologize and to quit volunteering because the threat of imprisonment was simply too much. The lawyers were partners for a law firm that also served the Democratic party. Interestingly enough, that same law firm had people calling signers of Nader petitions to try and get them to remove their names to keep the Nader name off of the ballot. That's some shady business. In fact, it's outright corruption. Maybe Hillary needs to reevaluate her vast right-wing conspiracy to include the left, or just stop calling her lawyer friends for favors.

That said, I actually did intend to write to contrast the candidates, and I may do so in the next few days or so, however, I think the focus of this has changed, so I'll let the creative juices flow as they may. Both parties are pissing me off right now. The Democrats seem content to have their candidate campaign based on things he did 35 years ago, leave out the bad parts of that (and his ENTIRE service record in the Senate). "Why do you want to be President, John?" "Uh, I served my country in Vietnam and won 3 purple hearts and a bronze star". Great... No wonder people can't stand politics. Bush isn't much better. "Mr. President, what do you want to do for America in the next four years?" "Uh, I'll have to ask my strategery advisor, but personally, I'd really like to see "nucular" added to the dictionary." Fantastic. That's real progress. Vote for Kerry, he's not Bush. Vote for Bush, he's not Kerry. What compelling arguments!

What's even better is that now these guys are trying to make themselves look like angels while they pimp the McCain-Feingold bill like a cheap... well, you fill in the blank. McCain wanted campaign finance reform and got it, so the candidates now just make other people say bad things for them. 527's are just paid Rottweilers. The swift boat ads were an excellent example of this, whether they were connected to the Bush campaign or not, they're still in a sense campaigning for Bush by making Kerry look bad (not that Kerry needs help in that department), and the Dems are no angels either. MoveOn.org is George Soros' (a billionaire philanthropist who exploited millions through his corporation and now has an overdeveloped sense of guilt about it) pet project to elect Anyone But Bush. He should just campaign for ABB for Pres. The Democrats have also enlisted Hollywood, especially Ben Affleck to campaign for them, as if that's not blatantly sleezy. Now, you can have your favorite actor tell you Bush is evil. Instead of making an informed decision yourself, just watch TV like you always do. I guess they thought that the GOP started it with Arnold Schwarzenegger so they could do the same thing. They must have missed the Reagan years. So what it comes down to is standard baby-kissing political garbage.

I'm the type of person that hates to listen to bitching unless it has a point and hates to listen to whining about a problem from people with no solutions, mainly because it's pointless. It's just venting and that only leads to other people getting mad about essentially nothing. So what's the solution to this problem?

1) No federal matching funds
2) No corporate or PAC sponsorship
3) Outlined stances on all major issues (resumes)
4) Get rid of the Electoral College

Every candidate who desires to run for office needs a fair chance to do so. There should be no federal matching funds, because they create a sense of entitlement to candidates, and encourage candidates to spend more at the expense of the taxpayer. If I have to work 5 months out of the year to pay Uncle Sam before I see a penny of my own cash, I think I need to say that my money needs to be spent more intelligently than that. Corporate sponsorship of a candidate also needs to be outlawed. Corporations have access to immense amounts of money and because of this gain a huge amount of influence over how the candidate votes. We all know that a certain potential for corruption exists when candidates feel (or are told that they must feel) that they owe a contributor something. Campaign funds need to come from the people, not from large abstract organizations. If the candidate has a good message, they'll get contributions. If not, they'll get the financial support they deserve and get out of the race without wasting our time. Along with that, PACs need to be limited as well. I can't tell you how many radical "grassroots" organizations with radical agendas are actively contributing to campaigns. The NRA is a right-wing one. Moveon.org is a left-wing one, but their are many, many, many others all trying to buy themselves a spokesman with campaign contributions, and that shizzle needs to end.

What else do they need to do? First, candidates need to make their stances on issues very clear. In fact, I'd like to see a required synopsis of a candidate's stances made public record before a candidate is even allowed on the primary ballots. If Kerry can't tell me whether he's for or against the war and swings his "opinion" depending on who's asking the question, then he shouldn't be President. I understand changing your mind occasionally, but Kerry's campaigning to make fence-sitting into a national sport. I believe I have a right to know whether a candidate is pro-gun control or not, pro-choice or not, pro-legalization of marijuana or not, pro-welfare reform or not, and so on. The Presidency is a job, and the candidates for the position should have to submit a resume to the American people for it. We could use the money we're saving from elimination of federal matching funds to support this by buying space in every major newspaper and magazine to print this information before the primaries and before the national elections. It could be just like in school. You get 2 8.5" x 11" pages, 12 point font, 1 inch margins to tell the American public why you should be elected. Tell us what experience you have, where you stand on the major issues, and what is your plan for the next four years. If you can't learn to write concisely enough to accomplish this in two pages, hire someone who can or quit running. As a doctor, I'll be required to be concise and accurate because of the volume of information I must convey and politics is no different. Cut through the BS of campaign rhetoric and political correctness. If you want to run, you need to be honest about yourself, and this is a way to hold you to that standard as well as to allow more people access to a concise summary of every candidate's position so they can make informed decisions on Election Day. And if it's printed in the newspaper, every person able to vote has access to it for fifty cents, no excuses for being uninformed about the candidates.

While I'm on the subject, let's get rid of the Electoral College too. It's the Illuminati of elections. If our country is a democracy (or representative democracy if you want to be anal-retentive), then we don't need a middle man organization to relay our votes to the federal government. A phone call with the results from each district to the state capitals and another phone call from the state capitals to Washington can accumulate the results of a popular election perfectly fine, and we don't have to listen to people telling us about the 'battle ground' states, which in a sense are the only states that actually matter because the candidates assume the other states are already divided up and know which candidate they'll support. That's ridiculous when the majority of people in this country are being flat-out ignored because some taped-glasses nerd in Washington DC has already told the candidates how you're going to vote. To me, that's insulting and it stinks like ass(umption).

Personally, I'm tired of having bureaucrats define for me what I should and should not know about a candidate so that my knowledge of an issue is so confused that I can't intelligently vote for anyone. I'm a smart guy, but I don't want to dig through a huge databank of he-said, she-said crap to get to the candidate's stances because they're both spending extortionate amounts of money for TV soundbites, radio spots, and newspaper ads to sling mud at each other. The structure through which a campaign earns money needs to be reformed in order to force the American public to become better informed, to force the candidates to communicate more effectively with the public, and to cut the special interests out of the picture. Candidates should be listening to their constituents not to PACs, corporations, their political party, the Teamsters, the mob, or anyone else. As it is, most people get their definitions of the candidates from SNL, the Daily Show, and the major news channels who specialize in telling you the story in 15 seconds or less, and that's unacceptable.