It is inevitable that with campaigns that last this long more unexpected occurrences happen. I have always thought that there were several things one should change in the way American presidential elections are held. First the length of time that the candidates campaign, second the amount of money spent while campaigning and third the matter of allowing politics and religion to mix.
It is obviously too late for changes in this year’s race, especially dealing with the length of it. The campaigning began such a long time ago that everybody is exhausted and we are just into May. A Floridian friend called me yesterday and said she was ready to scream. Nothing but news about the elections and what seemed like 24 hours advertising on TV. I am a little bit of a news freak but there is a limit to what people want to be exposed to or to know.
What upsets me most is the money involved. With the economic situation in the US such as it is, the ordeals that many people go through to reach the end of the month, the lack of health insurance due to the unaffordable premiums, the foreclosures, the price of oil and on and on – the candidates are spending money as if was growing on trees. I want to make it clear that I am not blaming them totally, it would be political suicide not to advertise, but that is precisely what should not happen. There should be a limit allowed to be spent and no candidate should overstep it. When I read in The Huffington Post “According to figures provided by a campaign source, Obama has spent $11,246,573 in media purchases in Pennsylvania, almost 3 dollars ($2.78) for every registered Democrat in the state and roughly $1.87 million a week. Clinton has spent $4,852,541, a bit more than $800,000 a week less than Barack Obama,” it made me angry. And even more so when I heard the bragging of the Obama’s followers about their candidate being awash in money. I cannot but ask myself where is all that money coming from? I am just hoping most of it comes from the so vaunted rich followers and not from the poor working class and young followers. It would be too uncaring that dollars are taken from people who can barely afford to give any. And the idea that a candidate gets the nomination simply because he or she had more money to spend in advertising is to me an anathema. What are we electing? A person who is going to get the country out of the morass the current administration has brought it to or a fund raiser? A future president of the country or an American Idol winner?
And then we have religion. Since this past weekend the media is buzzing with stories about Reverend Wright, Obama’s pastor, or as he says his former pastor (I imagine he and his followers are now wishing the Obama family would have left Wrights church before he entered the presidential race). I am not going to go into what that pastor said or did not say. I am sure that many other pastors, white or black, have said things that I prefer not to know about. Religion, as I have already said in another article, should not be mixed with politics. If it was that way we would not care at all about what a pastor is now saying.
Unfortunately, it hurts me to say that McCain has not involved himself as much as the democratic candidates in invoking religion. For instance, while Clinton and Obama vied for evangelical votes at a Christian forum, McCain was absent. He has said that “his religious faith was intense but private.” Obama, in a speech he gave to the United Church of Christ last June, described how — as a 20-something, secular community organizer — he knelt before the cross and became a Christian. And he went to say “I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me.” One could think that this story of his adult conversion is something he shares with President Bush. Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Obama asked a church audience in Bible-Belt South Carolina to help him become an “instrument of God” and join him in creating “a Kingdom right here on earth”. And I rest my case.
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