Friday, February 29, 2008

MONEY BUYS THE PRESIDENCY

Who cares about the issues? Not here. The next US President will be elected based on how much money above the other candidates he/she will collect from contributors to spend on "messages". Let us analyze that:

Barak Obama is cleaning up with an average of 1.5 million dollars a day Hillary Clinton about 1 million/day, and McCain close to a million a day.

Since the primaries will be going at it for a total of 11 months, we can easily estimate that the total amount contributed towards these candidates will exceed the amount of $1,155,000,000 (yes you read it correctly: Over 1 billion dollars!).

All that money will go to waste! It will be spent on COMMERCIALS/ADVERTISING! Better known in the primaries lingo as APPROVED MESSAGES.

Unfortunately, most voters have no idea of the candidates track record on any issue whatsoever. They don't have a clue. Thus the only source they have to compare is the TV message, which ends with the candidate reminding the prospective voter what his/her name is and approving the "message". So let's say that candidate "A" wants the audience to know that he/she alone passed 250 bills in Congress to boost the economy, assist needed children, increase Social Security payments, cover 100% of health care expenses, etc., etc. All those lies can be easily covered with a few commercials ran for a whole month during prime time. The candidates buy the airtime with the money we donated, and we, ignorant that we are about the real accomplishments of this candidate, "buy" the message.

So this is how we choose a candidate. The more we give, the more they spend on television, and the more votes they get from the people who believe anything they see on TV. Of course, at the end our votes may not count due to the incredible "democratic" way of selecting a President by electoral votes of the feared Delegates!

There are, of course, other factors that influence the vote, such as speeches and debates, The better the speaker the higher the chances to win. Again, it is not the track record that counts because no one really knows what any candidate really stands for on any issue until he becomes the Commander-In-Chief. Thus, words speak better than facts with these politicians.

I, for one, have a rule of thumb to select a candidate. If the leaving Commander-In-Chief was a complete ZERO (what an incongruous thing! Complete and Zero!) I pick the candidate that distances himself/herself the most from the exiting president. No rocket science about this, just mere logical thinking.

But the best rule of thumb is definitely THE MONEY. The candidate that spends more money in "messages" on TV will be our next President. God Bless America.

Note: The amount in dollars are estimates based on what we hear from different TV News programs. There is a possibility that our figures might be wrong, but... who gives a hoot? Everything is permitted in the political arena.