One thing I think needs a makeover in America is the campaign system for running for President.
How about a Presidential Olympics?
As in sports-type olympics, each candidate would demonstrate what THEY would or could do if they were President.
(For those who’d done such things before, they could certainly do them again, couldn’t they?)
No candidate could base their campaign on what any other candidate did wrong.
Though it’s important to have the discrepancies pointed out, any of those questions could be given to a trusted (by both sides), unbiased (politically and personally to any candidate) person or team who would be employed solely to discover the answers to every question posed to the campaign, including from the candidates themselves about other candidates.
No candidate would be allowed to fund his or her own campaign. Period. All of it would come from the same pool of funds.
If any person wanted to contribute to the campaign event, it could not be given to any one candidate; all funds received would be divided equally among all candidates.
We do not need to have the Presidency bought, simply by one’s ability to flood the media with ads. What we need is to be able to see what kind of a President we’d have if we voted for him or her, and we should even be able to annul someone’s Presidency if they turned out to be someone they did not claim to be.
Advertisers don’t get by with deceptive advertising–there are laws about that!
Why should politicians be able to get by with it?
Each candidate would, with no help from anyone else, have to come up with a program that did something good for America, demonstrated who they were and what they stood for, and that represented exactly what he or she would propose to do for America if elected.
If the candidate’s program showed the nation that they could raise $300,000,000 for their campaign, then that candidate would be expected to continue to raise money for the country throughout the Presidency. That’s what they’d be showing America they’d be doing for us, and America could use the help with the economy!
All the money from the pool of funds for this olympics would be spent on organizing the events, funding the Presidential programs, videotaping the processes, and interviewing the participants. Tests could be given to each candidate for integrity, honesty, ability to select good people for different roles, and for what they would do in various Presidential situations as a part of it.
Travel and speeches would not even need to be a part of the campaign. Besides, don’t most of these candidates have jobs that are getting neglected by their having to travel continuously around the country? (You know, jobs in the senate or something.)
Perhaps as a part of the test, each candidate could be given a day of presiding over typical Presidential situations, and there could be some kind of a manufactured “disaster” they would have to manage. The results would be included in the part that would be aired at the end–and it would all be on videotape.
Ability to effectively incorporate current trends into the presentation might be a valuable part of it. Instead of candidates spending all their time accusing each other, they might even have fun! (Entertainment is one of the big trends now.) And voters would have a chance to see as well as hear about what each would do in various possible situations important to our country.
As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words!
At the end, maybe the top winners could have a final debate about issues voters might bring up, and then the videotapes would be shown on TV and the internet across the nation, and everyone could then vote.
If a candidate expresses him- or herself better through some other medium than speech, I’d say they should “go for it!”
If they could write a song that tells us what their Presidency could do for America, it might be more effective than a speech.
Maybe they could paint a picture depicting the point of what they would do by contrasting what “was” with “what will be” with him in it.
…or write a play based on issues you’d address and have your supporters help you stage it, demonstrating how you’d deal with them.
Why do I think we need a campaign system change?
When the only candidates for President are Caucasian men, the current system might be acceptable. However, within the same election we now have a black man with an Arab name running for President (with plenty of unknowns about him) and a beautiful Pentecostal Christian woman in the running as Vice President.
I see certain aspects of culture coming into play that did not exist in Presidential elections before. And I believe their presence in the current campaign structure could keep voters from making the right decisions about who to elect for President.
In American culture, there are social boundaries one cannot now cross if he or she wishes to be seen as having proper taste and decorem. I saw two of those boundaries present within the current campaign. There are also two religious aspects present that need to be addressed in a better way.
I happen to be a Bible-believing Christian who goes to church every Sunday and gets e-mail from Christians on political subjects. I have been in church somewhere, nearly every Sunday of my whole life, and I talk to others in the Christian community on a regular basis.
So I know something about how anxious some Christians are about having a black man with an Arab-sounding name (along with a lot of other things we’ve heard and still don’t really know about him) becoming President of the United States.
I have heard Mr. Obama make fun of us in his speeches, ridiculing us for even thinking he could have Muslim ties. (Even though there are YouTube videos of him supporting his Muslim cousin Odinga in his Kenyan campaign to bring a terrorist regime there.)
I personally think there are some legitimate reasons for our fear, and there may be some reasons he should be addressing our fears seriously.
I can’t speak for all other Christians on this, but I know that some publications regularly reveal that Christians and Jewish people are aggressively persecuted in many countries that are predominantly Muslim.
Back in the 1980’s, I also had a friend from Iran (Farzan F., a graduate student I knew when I worked in a college setting) who told me that the woman he’d marry would be considered a possession, like a cow.
As a woman, I think of what could happen to women here, as well, if there should be a change to that way of doing things.
After 9/11, a commentator on TV said that it was a goal of the Muslim community to have a Muslim President within a decade, or something like that. Some of us still remember and have other input as well. It is hard not to connect the dots!
What I’m saying here: It seems to be politically and socially incorrect to ask the kinds of questions we Christians feel we might need to ask now.
Why is that? I think we have every right to know about a person who’s running for President, whatever his skin color might be.
Okay, let’s be fair here. Sarah Palin created another kind of difficulty for the other side. Right after John McCain announced she would be his running-mate, it seemed to me that Barak Obama had something of a struggle in knowing how to address the situation with a woman like her in it without being seen as engaging in a social impropriety. And after the Vice-Presidential debate, a commentator thought that Joe Biden might not have been as aggressive as he otherwise might have been because he was debating a woman.
Verbal abuse in the campaigns has gotten out of hand.
I think we need a system that does not allow abuse, whether by candidates or by their supporters.
Candidates should not be allowed to attack their competitors, any more than companies are legally allowed to attack their competitors in ads now. When one candidate does it, the other candidate feels obligated to reciprocate or voters might think those accusations were true!
We need a team of unbiased mediators to field and research questions about candidates that come up–mediators that are not related at all to the media, and not supported by any one party.
And I think every American needs to have access to the information after it has been researched, presented in a way anyone can understand in plain English.
Some seem to enjoy our present kind of setting for a campaign.
To me, it’s an example of the wrong kind to the young and demonstrates a spirit of war. In these volatile times, do we really need that?
And the way it is now, only the wealthy can ever hope to compete for the Presidency.
(You know it’s true.)
What if the undisclosed donations (which by law don’t have to be disclosed under certain conditions) come from terrorist organizations? They very well could have!
There seems to be no specific law about where donations come from, as long as they are under a certain dollar amount. Isn’t that true, or have I been misled?
We need a change in our campaign system for that reason alone!
While we are at it, maybe we need a better selection of candidates. And we need a system that would allow anyone in the country who was truly qualified to run for President, even if they only had a small budget. That DOES mean whoever-it-is would have to be a bonafide American citizen to start with!!!
And I think there should be proof that whoever runs has the majority of his or her connections with people who have been proved to do good things for people who are even different than he or she is.
The Presidency is too important to be decided based on which candidate markets himself or herself the best. This is a critical position; the one who fills it decides the future of our nation. Throughout the campaign process this year, there have been comments that one or the other was not ready to lead the nation, or whatever.
How can there even be questions like that? Surely every candidate has been screened by knowledgeable, trustworthy people first?
There should be pre-screening and tests given to candidates in the same way employers might do it when hiring employees.
Those who do not fulfill the basic requirements should not even be in the running at all.
Businesses would not survive if they followed a hiring process similar to the way our campaigns are run. Even people who look really good can sometimes disappoint you.
We need to thoroughly check people’s backgrounds first before we believe them, because anyone can truly be anything.
I worked for The Salvation Army (about 1980). It just so happened that I was their second hiree past a lovely (supposedly outstanding Christian) lady employee who embezzled $50,000 from their books. According to the story, when she heard the auditor was coming, she took the Captain out for lunch and set fire under the books just before she went. The building burned while they ate.
(Nice.)
You can bet the Captain screened every succeeding candidate for the position thoroughly after that. If he had only checked with this lady’s previous employer, he’d have found that she had done some funny things with the books there, too!
Putting our heads in the sand CAN hurt us sometimes.
We need a better way to “hire a President” than just assuming that someone with a golden tongue has the right heart to go with it!
