MUST be the accent. People keep asking me who I like for the US presidential election. And it did strike me recently that we're on the brink of some fairly exciting history, potentially electing the first African-American or the first female president, especially since I remember when just being Catholic was a big deal.
But the truth is, I don't like any of the candidates. I find the entire campaign process repellent. I'll go even further and say I find it obscene.
In the first place, my usually elastic imagination doesn't stretch far enough to enable me to fath
om why politics might appeal as a career, much less why anyone would see being president of the United States as a desirable goal. Whenever I voice that opinion people often reply: "The power!" Well there's far less of that than you'd think, in my estimation.
It doesn't matter how good your ideas are or how lofty your ideals, there's every chance they'll come to naught if Congress is against you. You'll be blamed for the country's every ill and get precious little credit for what goes right. The wages aren't as high as you'd easily earn practising business, law or medicine, and they make you live in someone else's house, with someone else's furniture. (Plus those tourists trooping through, which is my definition of hell!)
Ah, but think of all the good you can do as a politician, I hear someone say. As president you have a chance to improve the world.
Oh yeah? If that's true, then my message to presidential wannabes is this: Stop campaigning. Stop buying television time and commit that money to water purification systems. Stop jetting around and divert your travel allowance to medical research. Send the millions you've raised to literacy programmes. Feed the world. Make poverty history. Create a health care system that silences Michael Moore, and find environmental solutions even Al Gore can embrace.
In the most expensive campaign to date, 2004's, presidential hopefuls spent about $693 million. Each. Estimates for this campaign are $1 billion. Per candidate. According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, "even before a single vote was cast, candidates… raised and spent more money in 2007 than in all seven of the last eight presidential elections". Bear in mind that we don't have the two parties' official nominations nailed down yet, so add in the cost of the conventions, and additional campaigning in the run-up to November. (I haven't even mentioned the fact that as sitting senators, these people are neglecting their day jobs.)
Hillary Clinton raised $10 million in February, and still had to top it up with $5 million of her own. Barack Obama collected $22.8 million in the last quarter of 2007, bringing his total haul to $102.2 million. John McCain has raised in the region of $41.1 million this past year. Rudy Giuliani amassed $60 million to compete in just one primary before dropping out after an abysmal performance. He might as well have set fire to the money.
No part of me can condone spending such vast sums and pretending it's for the greater glory of America. The campaign process should be revolutionised, scaled back. It's do-able. Affordable technology would enable us to film everyone speaking their piece, then beam it across the world for discussion. Individuals who dug deep to donate should be encouraged to divert those funds to philanthropies instead of political campaigns. Change has got to come, for the current system is morally indefensible.
The full article contains 599 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
