Common Ground: Our System Weeds Out the Good Candidates

June 2007 | From the Editor

Our System Weeds Out the Good Candidates

Isn’t it convenient for big business that the mere act of donating to a campaign legitimizes it, maximizing the bet?

The only good thing about the 2008 presidential election race starting a year early, is that getting rid of George W Bush can’t happen fast enough for anyone — even the Republicans, who are already staging debates on Fox News, trying to out-Reagan each other.

Since 1960, when the telegenic JFK nipped Nixon in the polls, campaigns have been carried out on TV — and more so each election cycle. This time around it’s like a two-year-long mini-series.

Which leads directly to the biggest of many bad things about the ever-expanding election, which is that by the time 104 weeks’ worth of mud has been slung via juvenile attack ads, each of the candidates, and Bush’s eventual successor, will be more beholden to their corporate sponsors than any president in U.S. (and probably world) history.

And a media that wants to dumb everything down and stir everything up into a high-stakes reality show is now keeping a running tally of fund-raising. Sadly, this is not so much to raise awareness about the obscenity of that tally and its damage to democracy, but rather to keep track of who’s winning or “viable” months or years in advance.

It’s a cynical approach that admits two things: 1) that money equals votes (and it apparently does) and 2) that money, more than anything else, legitimizes you as a candidate — especially in the primaries.

When the field of potential nominees is as big as 10, it’s not ideas that separate you from the also-rans, or your voting record or your platform, but rather, via the media anointment, how “official” you are. This is determined by three things: 1) are you tall enough? (Dukakis rule); 2) are you charismatic enough; and 3) did enough corporations and industries needing favors decide to invest in you?

Isn’t it convenient for big business that the mere act of donating to a campaign legitimizes it, maximizing the bet? You can’t get that on Wall Street, Vegas or the racetrack! Imagine a rule of odds-making where the more money put on “black” makes it that much more likely for that little metal ball to land there. That’s what democracy is up against.

Since the media cares only about the gamesmanship of the campaigns and in handicapping the eventual winner, I’m resigned to confess that I’m paying little attention to the extended hoopla. But I saw a video on YouTube with clips from the Republican debate in South Carolina that really blew me away. Have you heard of this little-known Republican from Texas named Ron Paul? He’s one of six house Republicans who voted against the War Powers Act in 2002, and who wants to pull the troops out of Iraq. He’s like the Dennis Kucinich of last election: the guy with the best, forward-thinking ideas who tells it like it is and will never get elected because of it.

This former libertarian is the only GOP hopeful who opposes the war. To put it in ideological context, Paul is an isolationist, which to Fox News makes him smell like a liberal. Paul even suggested live on stage that our political and economic interventionist ways in the Middle East in the last 50 years have given cause to our enemies to attack us. This sent gasps rippling through the studio audience. (Have you noticed that Bin Laden has not been trying to take over the world like Tojo was when he attacked Pearl Harbor? Paul has too!) If you watched the debate, you saw the venom and anger of the supposed neutral Fox News moderators who almost trembled with rage as they challenged him.

Maybe Paul is the new “old” McCain: he’s not liberal, but he’s still got his integrity and ability to act on it. His eyes are open and he calls it like he sees it. Paul seems to put his country and his constituents before his career and campaign contributors. And his status as unelectable (read: doesn’t have lots of money) is telling. If our political system and our Big Business-serving corporate media would ever give the Paul’s and the Kucinich’s (and for that matter, third party candidates) a chance, then maybe we’d have our answer to that question that Americans on both sides of the fence have been asking since FDR or at least Kennedy: Where have all the great men gone? And why can’t one be president again?

— Todd Spencer

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