Take the Money Out of Politics> 5 Big Ideas

An American Senator must raise 60,000 dollars in political donations in every month of their 6 year term in order to have the average war chest to go into their reelection campaign. Congressmen have to raise over 40,000 dollars a month. Kerry and Bush themselves spent about 700 million dollars in the 2004 presidential election.

Where does this money come from? Sure, some of it is from ordinary citizens who feel a party or candidate represents their views. But lots of that money comes from special interests. I imagine those corporations, unions and ideological movements want something in return for their donations.

So what we have is a system where our government makes a large amount of decisions not based on what American want, but instead on what the people who fund their elections want. The only people theoretically immune to this are multi-millionaires. We have a country where the only way to become a politician is to be filthy rich or just plain filthy. That doesn't sound like Democracy to me.

What if a Presidential candidate and political party were to say they wanted to change this system and offer a specific plan to do this. Politicians, like John McCain often say they want to take the money out of politics, but even the laws he was able to pass through congress were easily circumvented by special interests. I may not be a big city politician, but here'’s a rough plan that I put forward:

Free air time would be given to candidates on public television. There would be more debates than in our current system and on very specific topics. A website would have a profile for every candidate in every race in the country. Candidates would have to answer questions on where they stand on the issues. Voters could fill out a poll and find out where their positions fit with the different candidates. There would be no mailings (save the trees), and any kind of advertising would be limited and highly scrutinized for untruths and misrepresentation. There would also need to be a structure in place to give independents a fair shot at being elected.

I know this is a simple plan and there are tons of holes in its practicality and legality, (as in free speech and an important Supreme Court ruling) but this is a rough draft. No matter what was done we would be improving the system. I know most American citizens would prefer the above system to our present one. I know that a party that embraced this radical reform would gain a lot of new voters. I wonder how many of our leaders like being beholden to special interests. I wonder how many would be willing to change a system which has brought them to power.