One aspect of this election that has always frustrated me is the enormous amounts of money that pour out of these campaigns. I am hesitant to even comment on it because I know that there is no changing it. But I decided to anyway.
Each candidate’s campaign pulls in millions and millions of dollars a month. This money gets spent on typical campaign items like fliers, signs, bumper stickers, etc; but a lot of it gets dumped into funding for commercials and various media outlets. I can only imagine how much the Obama campaign paid for a super bowl ad. I started to do some research to estimate just how much money has been spent in this election from all of the Republican and Democratic campaigns, but I quickly decided I didn’t want to know.
I’m well aware that this spending it not going to change. To be competitive in these races you have to fork over the cash. That’s just the way the game is played. Just for the sake of argument, though, I was thinking about how novel it would be if a candidate raised the same amount of money for his or her campaign but decided to use it elsewhere. For candidates who stress the importance of accessible healthcare and the alleviation of poverty, what a grand gesture it would be to give millions of dollars of campaign money towards one of those causes. What if Hillary decided to give thirty-million dollars one month to struggling hospitals, or if McCain decided to forfeit his campaign funds and direct them towards providing better care for our troops? What if a candidate decided not to play this game, and not waste such enormous amounts of money on TV ads? I think that would be such a bold gesture, that it may even warrant more attention than those who have a million TV ads. That candidate would have my vote.
Each candidate’s campaign pulls in millions and millions of dollars a month. This money gets spent on typical campaign items like fliers, signs, bumper stickers, etc; but a lot of it gets dumped into funding for commercials and various media outlets. I can only imagine how much the Obama campaign paid for a super bowl ad. I started to do some research to estimate just how much money has been spent in this election from all of the Republican and Democratic campaigns, but I quickly decided I didn’t want to know.
I’m well aware that this spending it not going to change. To be competitive in these races you have to fork over the cash. That’s just the way the game is played. Just for the sake of argument, though, I was thinking about how novel it would be if a candidate raised the same amount of money for his or her campaign but decided to use it elsewhere. For candidates who stress the importance of accessible healthcare and the alleviation of poverty, what a grand gesture it would be to give millions of dollars of campaign money towards one of those causes. What if Hillary decided to give thirty-million dollars one month to struggling hospitals, or if McCain decided to forfeit his campaign funds and direct them towards providing better care for our troops? What if a candidate decided not to play this game, and not waste such enormous amounts of money on TV ads? I think that would be such a bold gesture, that it may even warrant more attention than those who have a million TV ads. That candidate would have my vote.
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