The $100 Presidency

I've recently been debating my Mother on Campaign Politics. She received an email from some family concerning McCain's family and that got her to talking over the news this morning which was going on about the debt incurred by Ex-Presidential Candidate, Hilary Clinton.

So I raised my opinion: I want a presidential candidate that can run as a SERIOUS candidate with $100.

As I see it, anyone can run for president - provided they've got $100 million to start with. Consider this: the Clinton campaign currently has a debt exceeding $20M. $20,000,000. 4,796,163 Venti Mochas at Starbucks. The cost of 1,819,836 lbs of coffee. But obviously less than it takes to run for president.

The current presidential candidates are begging for money. Everyday I receive emails from the RNC and the DNC (I'm unfortunately currently registered as a Republican, so I get more RNC than DNC emails) asking for me to donate to either the McCain or Obama campaigns. I can hardly afford to put gas in my '91 Honda (~35 mpg!) and they want me to give them money so they can piss it away in over $800M on TV ADS ALONE! It's just ludicrous that it is going to take around a total of $2,000,000,000 to have a presidential election.

While, yes, I realize that it takes money to purchase air-time for your mud-slinging campaign, do we not see the inherent problem in allowing candidates to purchase air time? Who ever has more money is able to being media attention; to create a bigger buzz. So, we need to give away the air time. And you know how much air time they get? 30-seconds a day. All across the board. Any candidate can get their 30-seconds; the candidate is, however, responsible for making the commercial. They can pick their media, too. Radio or TV. Doesn't matter, really. DVR gets rid of television commercials and the radio is obsolete for anyone with an iPod or even a computer. So we're left with the internet where candidates spend and spend...

A January Lehman Brothers report takes the most bullish approach, forecasting political advertisers could spend over $110 million on Web advertising in 2008. Meanwhile, a December report from PQ Media expects just $73 million will go towards the Web. Enter Borrell Associates with its conservative estimate of online political ad dollars. Though the research firm anticipates $4.8 billion will be spent in total on political advertising in ‘08 -- the highest total cross-media revenue forecast of the three reports -- it believes just $20 million in political ad money will go to the Web. One reason for Borrell’s low figure is the recognition that campaigns are taking advantage of as much free online media as possible, by creating free social network profiles, posting video to YouTube, and taking advantage of earned media from blogs and news sites. -- SOURCE

There isn't a source on the net that predicts that candidates are going to spend an average. Records are constantly being broken - be it in total dollars spent or in voter turn-out.

And it sickens me to think that our political process is run by men/women who've never had a day where they only had $100 in their pockets. Our presidents are supposed to be well educated, but where do we draw the line? They are sent to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, wherever. Ivy League all the way; bought and paid for by a well-to-do family. These candidates have never had to do any real work.

I want a candidate that will dress in rags and only spend $100 on his entire campaign. That'll be a candidate I'll vote for (actually, I'd vote for anyone over Clinton, Obama, or McCain). I was one of a total of 1,000 people in my state to vote Ron Paul.