A friend and I were talking politics the other day. That in itself is rare, because politics is not my favorite subject. There are just too many things wrong with politics, especially these days, and it just raises my blood pressure. Who needs that?
But my friend and I decided that getting elected is not, and may never have been, about who is the best person to fill the position. It's about who has the most money. Yeah, I know, big shocker. It is no stunning revelation. That's been known by anyone with even the minimalist exposure to the real world. And some people have been trying to find a way to fix that for a long, long time.
In our conversation, I suggested placing a limit on how much money a candidate could receive from sources other than his own savings. But my friend saw some problems with that. First, how could you really track how much a candidate had coming in. Second, how would this limit be established for different political races. Obviously, he argued, a city council candidate would need less funds to campaign than, say, a U.S. presidential candidate. Setting it too low would hurt the presidential candidate and setting it too high would defeat the purpose for the council candidate. If a monetary limit were placed, there would have to be different levels for different positions.
Then my friend made his own suggestion. Money donated to a candidate could come only from people or organizations that lived or worked in the district they represented.
Not a bad suggestion and, I admit, better than my own. But I still see a problem with tracking, and how do you define living or working in a specific district? Those familiar with the Sun City environment know people have multiple homes in multiple states.
Yes, each idea has some bugs to work out. But I am wondering if a combination of the two might prove interesting.
One way or another, politics will never change until money is either taken completely out of the equation, or made a minimal influence.
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