Edwards withdrew from the presidential campaign today. He didn’t give any indication of why, but unless it was a decision dictated by personal reasons, I think we can safely blame our campaign finance system.

Our system favors the corrupt individual who is able to raise the most money. Wealthy donors are able to disproportionately influence the actions of our politicians since they can more easily donate the maximum contributions. Everyone knows this argument. This is nothing new. What we’ve seen in the democratic nomination process has further elucidated why change must occur sooner rather than later.

I suggest that the reason Hillary has been able to garner the support of the Democratic Establishment is that Democrats fear how she may respond against those who opposed her if she was to win the nomination. not to mention the Clinton’s are a powerful fund-raising pair and many Democrats, especially in the Mid-Atlantic oh significant chunks of their campaign coffers to Clinton support and donors. Meanwhile the people get cheated since they are left out of the true nomination process which is made up of the power-players in Washington.

Edwards chose public financing, which while noble, was essentially raising the red flag. What did he expect to be able to do? Was Hillary going to withdraw early? She had too much money to play with. Was Obama? He had equally large sums of money. Maybe he knew his election was a long shot and he chose the noble route.

The fact that dichotomy between doing the write thing and winning dominates our political system is plain wrong. No wonder politicians aren’t receptive to our concerns. No wonder nothing really gets done. The special interests thrive in an environment of chaos. Previous campaign finance legislation has been a joke. Much more extensive reform of the process would be necessary.

- First, the media must be forced to provide more REAL NEWS coverage of issues and individuals. Where is the fact checking? Where is the anti-spin. the whole point of the media is to check and verify. Instead they willfully prance into the “spin room” like a lap dog. “Roll-over and repeat after me…” The debates have been equally petty most of the time. Force media coverage a la the State of the Union for a series of well coordinated debates. Non-network associate moderators should lead them so we don’t have to worry about Wolf Blitzer-esque manipulation for ratings. We own the airwaves and the networks are supposed to be serving the public interest. They forgot about that in between Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. We CAN force them to serve our interests.

- Second, A fixed amount should be provided to candidates equally. You could eliminate all personal contributions altogether, or you could provide a lower limit say in the $200 range. Personal fortunes should be off-limits. Once again, a fair playing field is the true goal we are striving for.

- Third, politicians should be banned from working as lobbyists. They shouldn’t be permitted to make money for clients at the expense of our system of government.

- Lastly, this must be funded from a fixed, inflation adjusted fund that is off limits to changes without a super-majority. As a new congress comes in the rules shouldn’t be rolled back. The nice part is that eliminating the money from the process has a knack for taking away the influence that infuse money into the system in the first place.

Will any of this happen? Probably not, but we can hope and maybe the next John Edwards will be able to stay in the race for the long haul.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.