Dollars & Democracy: The 2008 Election Highlights American Excess

Like a credit card bill from hell, first quarter fundraising reports showed an excessive amount of dollars collected for the 2008 presidential candidates. Senator Hillary Clinton leads the soon-to-be spending spree, having raised $36 million through the first three months of her campaign, quadrupling the record amount collected by Al Gore in 1999. Even John Edwards – the third place finisher in the Democratic primary – has eclipsed Gore’s numbers, raising a cool $13 million for his campaign; America still awaits for Barack Obama’s and Republican figures to be disclosed.

It has become safe to assume the 2008 presidential election will be costlier than any election in the history of our world. Spending will, undoubtedly, eclipse the $1 billion mark in this decisive race. Seems like an excessive amount of zeroes for a job that pays $400,000 per year, but it becomes even more extreme when one realizes $1 billion is a higher dollar amount than the entire GDP of 28 nations.

But people like Jonah Goldberg would have you think that this price tag is by no means intolerable. According to his March 28^th article in the Washington Post, “More money means more communication, more debate, more education. In other words, more democracy.”

More money does not mean more communication. More money means more bought votes, more you scratch my back while I throw dollars at yours. Money is to political campaigns what PowerBait is to the first day of fishing – you just have to continuously apply until you get every fish to bite, because they are all hungry. Plus more money usually means more painful, slanderous and repetitive advertisements; not what the Framers would consider a two-way communicative conduit.

Neither does more money mean more debate; it eliminates it. Today we hardly elect the candidate with the best ideas. We elect the candidate who gets our attention, and that usually comes at a price and with many purse strings. According to OpenSecrets.org, we elect the candidate with the biggest checkbook 97% of the time. This causes many deserving candidates to drop out of the race early simply because they cannot keep up with the fundraising. More money means less candidates and less debate.

And to believe that more money equals more education? Considering that 5% of voters elected Bill Clinton in 1992 because he played the saxophone or that 6.25% of voters placed George Bush in office in 2000 because he was a guy they could “sit down and have a beer with,” if we really wanted to educate the voters, we could do it in a much more effective and efficient manner than making signs and barraging them with tasteless, purchased propaganda.

Instead, political races should have a level political playing field. This nation was founded upon equal opportunity, and the current price tag of elections virtually eliminates any hopes of average citizens with great ideas to play in the same arena as the millionaires and billionaires that run the system and the corporations that sponsor them. Watch Bullworth or Man of the Year if you want to laugh at that biting but honest audacity.

Money has not enhanced our democracy, it has squandered it. The only way to solve this is to slowly take it back from campaign donors and pork-barrel spending projects and for every voter to look at their politician like they would their teenager with our national credit card. Call it "American Excess," because that is what money has done to our political system. If we neglect to watch it, recover it, and reinvent it, the great democratic system that was fine-tuned in this country and replicated around the world will not be every where we want it to be.

Rendell Brings Shovel to a Snowball Fight

KeystonePolitics.com, February 12, 2008

As Pennsylvania was blanketed by snow on Tuesday, the thickest “white stuff” was recorded by Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“You’ve got conservative whites [in Pennsylvania],” said Governor Ed Rendell, “who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.” Rendell continues his charade, saying, while “looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was – well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking – but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so.”

Wow. Did Pennsylvania really elect a man so insensitive, so egotistical, and so naïve?
I have three questions for you, Mr. Rendell:

Don’t you believe you won in the 2006 general election because you were the stronger candidate?

The 2006 Swann campaign was infantile: Swann had political party (our state is slightly Democrat) and fundraising disadvantages (Rendell out-raised Swann 2:1). He was also a non-native Pennsylvanian that had no political experience running against the incumbent governor, who walloped him in every debate because Swann had the policy-handling skills of Humpty Dumpty. Why he lost the election had nothing to do with his skin color. It had to do with Rendell’s ability to work a shovel and Swann’s lack of it.

Second, since you relied upon black and suburbanite voters, never conservative whites, what gives you the right to speak on their behalf?

When gun control and abortion became major wedge issues in the 2002 primary race, Rendell lost every middle county to current Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. In 2006 he lost these counties again, sans a handful. Rendell’s comments not only unearthed James Carville’s description of Pennsylvania (“Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east, and Alabama in between”), it attempted to recast the areas (he never carried) as culturally backward, as if the Little Rock Nine, Brown v. Board, and Martin Luther King, Jr. did little to change the mindset of its residents. And as a resident of these areas, it’s offensive.

Lastly, since conservative whites are opposed to label candidates such as the “black” one, why would they support the “woman candidate” – especially one with the last name of Clinton? Or why should they support any candidate you endorse?

Based on profiling, most voters who will disregard Obama will also not vote for Clinton, just as they disregarded Rendell. By pitting the two candidates against each other – and reinforcing the “conservative whites’” distaste for him – our governor is reducing the slight Democratic lead for either winner, whether it’s Obama or Clinton. Instead, the scales tilt toward the moderate and toward the Republican. Advantage: McCain.

At this time next month, the presidential primary will move to Pennsylvania. And, just like cinders spoil a fresh, uncontaminated snowfall, insensitive comments issued by our own governor may have tarnished one of the greatest moments in our state’s electoral history. But then again, the next comment could be even more outrageous, too.