I don’t care about the length of the campaign, I care about the money. It is ridiculous what they spend on campaigns. If the form the campaigns took was candidates meeting people rather than billboards and commercials, don’t you think you could handle it?

I’m afraid the Supreme Court has made it clear that it will not tolerate limits on campaign spending, either in amounts or timing. But you could start a drive to move the Iowa caucuses to, say, June. The whole country would thank you.

I’m with LL. The good people of Iowa have done this to themselves, and thus you have no right to complain. This is just a long drawn out whine by someone who really ought to be spending her energy on getting her state leaders to fix this problem. You don’t need the straw poll and the caucuses, and the caucuses could be moved much later in the year. If you did those things you would never see another presidential candidate darken your door and Iowa would go back to being the ignored fly-over state it deserves to be. Get cracking on that immediately, would ya? Meanwhile i’ll be here not holding my breath.

Limiting money and limiting time frames are limitations placed on freedom. We really should consider the checks and balances designed in government and realized they are there as grand, guiding principles to try to place a balance on what human nature naturally tends to do. Rather than designing a constitution with a bunch of minutiae rules, we have various checks and balances. With that in mind, let’s analyze the problem from another perspective.

If government has a lot of power, and can increasingly pay off or reward those in power, or even from the most altruistic perspective if the power is merely used to enact agendas with far reaching consequences, then it stands to reason no matter how many rules we craft, no matter how many limitations we have, money will always be an issue and there will always be jockeying for position before, during, and after elections.

However, if we reduce the amount of power government has, the incentives change dramatically. If you can’t reward companies with billions of dollars worth of government funding or subsidies or tax exemptions, then there is not much purpose to donating so heavily, and making sure “your guy” is the one who runs and gets elected.

I don’t pretend to know what the exact prescription for the problem is, as far as the details are concerned, but it seems if government can’t spend as much, can’t pick winners and losers, etc. to the degree it already does then you won’t have as much money flowing into it.

Trying to limit money or trying to limit campaigns in any way just won’t have the desired result, unless someone is able to point to another nation with a government not mirred in corruption.

Removing the money/emphasis from campaigns is not the problem. You’re just treating the symptoms. Removing the money/power from government will change the nature of the system. I’m not suggesting government have no power, and no money, but it’s at least extremely likely that we’ve tipped the scales too far in the other direction consider the state of our economy, debt, deficit, etc.

#8- bbell- you are a lucky duck.

Come January we will not be eating at our local hamburger joint (Heavenly Burgers, for those who care) until after the fall elections. It is the go-to place for every politician. They each eat a burger, give a thumbs up, get their picture taken and it gets framed and put up on the wall. The place is interesting because it captures American politics and celebrity since cameras were invented.
Also sucks for the locals who can’t get in during busy election seasons.

Oh well, As MCQ is ALWAYS quick to point out, I do tend to be a whiner.

Chris 7. As an example of a country with a different system, but not corrupt, try most of the countries with a westminster form of government such as UK, Canada, Australia.

Much of your problem is in finding the candidate to represent the party not in power. In our system that person is automatically the head of the opposition party. We do not vote for a leader for the country, we vote for a local member and the leader of the party who has the most members becomes the national leader.

As there are usually more than 2 parties in the race we have preferential voting, where you number the cantidates in order of your preference, and if the person you put as number 1 fails to win then the person you put as 2 gets your vote until your vote counts. This way you can vote for someone who you don’t expect to win, either as a protest, or because you like their ideas, and not waste your vote.

I believe there are other systems which are equally effective in some of the western european countries. As far as the financing issues there are many countries in the first world judges to be less corrupt than the US.

The American system is not necessarily the only or even the best political system in the world. Most of the world is agast at the waste of time, talents and money America spends on choosing it’s leader

With all my heart: “aye.”

Geoff-A, if you think the UK, et al. is not corrupt in picking winners and losers, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Please don’t confuse corrupt with me saying they’re all evil. But the tens of thousands of decisions they make that pick winners and losers in various tax breaks, tarifs, etc. etc. is what infuses so much money, influence, pressure, etc. into the system. Just look at tariffs into the UK or USA alone. Over 16,000 special classifications. Why would an ice skating shoe need to be taxed more than a snowboot? Or a snowboard boot more than a ski boot? This is not just pointing out the obfuscation of the tax code, but points to the reasons. Do you think it’s likely that various people of influence exerted their influence, whether they owned a factory here (or there), were an investor, etc. etc.? I find it highly suspect that we’d think our governments aren’t corrupt and then give them pinpoint precision to pick winners and losers via the tax/import codes.

The problem is the power to do these things. Reduce the power and you reduce the incentives. If all products were taxed the same, all people were taxed the same, and whatever exceptions we had were very clearly defined and limited in number, scale, and scope, then we would not see so much money and influence rushing to gain political power.

Taking the campaign money out of the equation can not solve the problem.

John, your comment made me look up a few numbers just for information purposes… In 2008, $5.3billion was spent on Federal election campaigning. In midterm 2010, $4.2billion was spent. We can only assume it will be even higher in 2012.