Presidential Elections: For the Elite Only

Well, here we are, with six months of the year 2008 gone, and the Presidential candidates for both parties are now in full campaign mode. John McCain was practically a foregone conclusion as the Republican nominee months ago, while the Democrats endured a dramatic runoff between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. With each party having chosen its presidential nominee, the great mystery now is who each candidate is going to choose for his running mate.

As we take a moment to survey the political landscape, let's examine what is really going on in our political process by asking a series of rhetorical questions. Are Republicans that enthused about having John McCain as their candidate? A year ago, did anyone think that Barack Obama had a chance with Hillary Clinton in the race? The presidential election in the United States has become more of a pastime like watching baseball. When you watch sports analysts and commentators, they're usually pretty good at breaking down a team's strengths and weaknesses based on past performance. Indeed the presidential election has become more of a handicapper's paradise. For example, most people would assume that a viable candidate can only get elected as a Republican or a Democrat. When you run as an Independent, like Ross Perot did and like Ralph Nader does, the overwhelming perception is that those candidates simply take away votes from either the Republican or Democratic candidate. An Independent candidate these days, even with the resources of a billionaire like Perot, simply can't compete with the two major parties. So why do independent candidates like Perot or Nader even try? Probably for the public exposure they get, and even more likely, for the federal matching funds they get if they achieve a certain percentage of the vote.

So are the presidential elections really about serving the American people? Or are they about spending a lot of money on advertising, conventions, and so forth, to advance the exposure and the agenda of a certain political party? It has been suggested that close to fifty percent of registered voters stay home during every presidential election, and that if even half of the voters who normally sit out an election participated, they would decide every election. So what are the presidential elections really about?

As a voter or potential voter, it's reached the point where we've about heard it all. If you're a Republican, your candidate is going to cut taxes, strengthen the military, strengthen national security, provide quality education for our children, and strengthen Social Security. If you're a Democrat, you're only going to raise taxes on the richest Americans while cutting them for everyone else, you're going to balance the budget that the Republicans keep overspending, you're going to keep us out of war no matter what, you're going to promote socialized medicine paid for by the government, and you're going to concentrate more on the economy and local issues than the Republicans. If you've ever had the opportunity to meet a politician at the national level in person, they are among the most scripted individuals you will ever meet. Especially in public, they're terribly afraid of saying something that could derail their whole campaign. For Kerry in 2004, it was his famous statement, "I voted for funding the war in Iraq before I voted against it." Hillary likely derailed herself with her comments about arriving in Bosnia "under sniper fire." Usually, the successful politicans are the ones who can avoid making gaffes in public that the media picks up on, and then plays over and over again, until the candidate has soiled himself just enough to lose.

In recent years, presidential elections have been very close, so close that the Supreme Court had to decide who our president was in 2000. On election night, the media goes back and forth between Republican and Democratic headquarters in the various states as if they're watching the NBA or the NFL draft. Just like a first round draft pick in the NBA can fall behind ten or twelve picks ahead of him when it is rumored that he has a kidney ailment (witness Darrell Arthur of the KU Jayhawks), a presidential candidate can cost himself votes in a variety of ways, by making statements like John Kerry did about his support and non-support of the Iraq war, or by saying things like "Read my lips, no new taxes," by George H. W. Bush. Most people would agree that between 35 and 40% of the total number of voters are going to vote Republican or Democratic, regardless of who the candidate is. The great "undecideds" out there are supposedly choosing our president every election cycle, leaving maybe 20 - 25% of the voters making the final decision.

Then are we really getting "the people's choice" come election night, or are we getting the only one left standing after the media scrutiny and the televised debates? Are we getting the candidate who had the better funding than his opponent? Case in point: Hillary Clinton had $100 million in her campaign fund at one point, and when she finally bowed out, she had something like only $11 million, $6 million of which was money she had loaned to her own campaign. Barack Obama, on the other hand, used the internet to raise some $30 million, and thus had $19 million more than Hillary to spend on his campaign when Hillary quit. Even the New York Times suggests that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between what Hillary's agenda would have been, had she been the nominee, and what Obama's agenda will be. Obama now has most of the Clinton campaign staff on board with him in order to help him campaign against John McCain and to fill cabinet posts if Obama gets elected. Where is the "change" in all of this, that Obama claims to want to make in government, that even brought Oprah Winfrey out as an active endorser, along with Tom Hanks and Al Gore?

It doesn't get any better on the Republican side either. John McCain wants to advance the global warming agenda that even the Clinton Administration had the good sense to reject, although Congress may have had something to do with that. McCain has stated that he wants to "reach out to Independents and Democrats." Does this sound like a Republican candidate? McCain appears to have been the only one left standing in the Republican primaries since the country appears to be skeptical about nominating someone like Mitt Romney who is a member of the Mormon faith. McCain seems to be on a mission to prove that he can win the presidency without actively courting the conservative base of the Republican party, thought to make up at least 30% of the Republican party. Actually, McCain appears to be taking the conservative base for granted, given the ultra liberal agenda of Barack Obama, along with the radical preacher he severed ties with after twenty-some odd years in order to position himself better as some kind of centrist.

Finally, we have to ask ourselves, since we're all familiar with these news stories of the candidates and their campaigns, if the candidates are really looking out for us or for themselves. It would seem that if a candidate were really running an issue-oriented campaign and not just posturing themselves to ensure victory, they wouldn't rely on people who served on campaign staffs eight and twelve years ago. But politics is a business, just like any other, and to quote a cliche, "to the victor goes the spoils." As an example, look at how much former president Bill Clinton earns on the lecture circuit. He earns somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 a speech. A former president gets Secret Service protection the rest of his life, and in the case of Bill Clinton, a presidential library worth in excess of $125 million. Which seems to suggest that politics is all about perception and money and not about the will of the people.

The business of politics seems to be one of perpetuating problems in order to have issues to run on in the next election cycle. The immigration reform bill passed in 2006 in Congress was reputed to have been almost word-for-word, the same one that was passed back in 1986. The candidates who run for office are those who can afford to pay to play. Hillary Clinton had had a presidential campaign fund dating back to the year 2000. It's hard to imagine that Barack Obama won the nomination from her when his agenda was essentially the same as hers, but he proved to be the more savvy campaigner of the two. An inside look at the Hillary campaign revealed that the tactics the Clintons used in the '90s to win, simply didn't work in the 21st century, and that high-pressuring superdelegates, despite past loyalties to Bill Clinton, had the opposite effect when trying to use them to promote Hillary.

The presidential election of 2008 is shaping up to be a contest between an ultra liberal in Barack Obama, and a closet liberal in John McCain. As suggested earlier, that politics is essentially a spectator sport, the great decision to be made by those Americans who decide to vote this time around will probably be one that has nothing to do with either candidate. Gasoline prices are high and the perception that the war in Iraq may be responsible at least in part for them, may ultimately decide whether we have a Democrat or a Republican sitting in the White House next January. In attempting to handicap this season's presidential election, McCain shapes up a lot like a Bob Dole or a Gerald Ford. In Bob Dole's case, it was simply his "turn" to run.

Bill Clinton was simply a much better campaigner than Bob Dole. This writer is no admirer of Bill Clinton, but Clinton (Bill, that is) understands politics, at least when it comes to himself. Gerald Ford seems to have more in common with John McCain. Both men were moderates and want to distance themselves from conservatives. So we're left with two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, who are going to both try to convince us that they're something they're not, and that would be, the "people's choice." About the only real hope for voters disenchanted with both candidates is that we'll get either a Democrat president with a Republican Congress or vice versa, so that gridlock can keep either one of them from advancing an agenda that's all about them and not about us.