Background: I appeared on Al-Jazeera’s World News last week to discuss the “Super Tuesday” presidential primary results–my previous posts on it are Reflections on Super Tuesday, Part I: The Far-Right’s Hysterics over John McCain & Immigration and Reflections on Super Tuesday, Part II: Barack Obama’s Success in Deep South, All-White States To learn more about my views of the presidential election, click here.
I had an interesting conversation with Mark, a producer from England, in the trailer before going on. I have repeatedly bitched and moaned about the absurd US primary system. It goes on forever, vastly longer than necessary, wastes a huge amount of money, and is very, very punishing for the candidates. There’s a part of me that wants to support Obama simply because he is the only one I am certain is young enough and strong enough to go through two years of hell running for president and then have any energy left to actually be president. I respect McCain, but he occasionally looks as if he’s going to keel over.
Anyway, while Mark shared many of my criticisms, he also pointed out that in England, each party essentially chooses their candidate through a closed process. He says he likes the way the United States lets the voters in each party choose the party’s nominee. I suppose the best compromise would be to keep the American system as it is but make it much much shorter– maybe six months at the most.
One thing about the English system which seems desirable is the way they limit campaign spending. Every political party with a certain amount of seats gets the same amount of political advertising space on the television shows. Nothing more is permitted. This avoids the problem we have in the US, where candidates must spend enormous sums of money to run for president, and the money becomes a warping factor in the way they govern.
It has always appeared to me that one reason why we have the political system we do is because the media makes a lot of money off of all of the advertising dollars spent. Mark pointed out, however, that the nature of the presidential race–news spread out all over the country, moving quickly, and demanding immediate coverage–is enormously expensive for the networks. It’s an interesting point, but I still think the networks come out ahead.
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