IN THE United States, we're serious about our voting. Sure, on November 4, 2008, you can expect about half of eligible voters to avoid the polls, but for the rest, casting a ballot represents the culmination of a two-year battle for the highest office in the land in a process that is at once unbelievably preposterous and distinctly American. The United States, the world's sole superpower, has muscled its way to the forefront of electoral excess.
In January, Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner said that 2008 would be the country's first "$1 billion election," and "to be taken seriously," candidates would need to raise at least $100 million by the end of 2007. Of course, money can never be separated entirely from politics -- we have the lobbying industry to thank for that -- and a campaign can't run on ideas alone. The suggestion that a platform isn't good until $100 million has been thrown behind it, however, is ridiculous. The McCain-Feingold bill has made the world a little safer, but for every improvement in campaign finance reform there's a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lurking in the loopholes. The FEC must do more than make empty promises and cower as the money flows past. I have a hard time believing that limiting a candidate to spending $50 million also limits their ability to come up with proposals to make our country better.
According to the nonpartisan Project for Excellence in Journalism, the 2008 election eclipsed the Iraq War as the most newsworthy story for the second quarter of 2007, 15 months before Election Day. Do we really need that amount of time to make up our minds? Consider France. In that country, the 2007 presidential race began on April 9 and ended 11 days later. There were two rounds of voting, and a little over a month after the start of campaigning, Nicolas Sarkozy was sworn in as the sixth president of the Fifth Republic. To an American, this seems like insanity -- people can actually hear the relevant issues and make up their minds in a matter of weeks? As it turns out, yes. Eighty-five percent of French voters turned out to cast ballots.
So far, the 2008 election cycle has been dominated by Barack Obama attacking Hillary Clinton attacking Rudy Guiliani attacking Fred Thompson, with about ten other people thrown in. And we're still a year from Election Day. Is all this negative energy supposed to excite me about the electoral process? I always imagined voting for the first time as a watershed moment where I checked off a name for progress. To think that I will vote instead for whoever did the best job criticizing someone else is disheartening. The endless cycle of politicizing destroys much of the civic spirit that propels us to the polls.
If that's not enough, recall that while we fight over the next president, we still have one sitting in office now. I can't believe I'm going to bat for George W., but the man deserves better. He was reelected to govern for four more years -- not to be sidelined halfway through by an army of politicians clamoring to be his successor. The attention on the 2008 race has taken away from his ability to enact policy, and though it's clear that his blunders have cost him much support, more still has evaporated into the void of anonymity. He may be president de jureuntil Inauguration Day 2009, but de facto he's already been forgotten.
Time is valuable. Why not limit the campaign season to the six months before Election Day? The primaries would be held in May and June, with a lottery determining which states go first. In a compressed electoral calendar, candidates will have to think about what they're saying and develop a platform that is clear, concise and genuine. Rather than endure two years of the ensemble cast, Americans will spend a few weeks considering candidates for each party's nomination, hold the primaries, narrow the field to one on each side, and have a solid four months to make a final decision. Perhaps most importantly, a tighter system would cut down on both the excess of money raised and money spent.
The endless presidential election season is out of control. No matter how important an election might be, the longer it goes on the more it turns into an out-and-out fight. In the end, we only can handle so much of the real thing before we turn back to "Dancing With the Stars" and support our favorite B-list celebrity's quest for the championship. And that we should -- in America, we have the freedom to worry about more than one type of contest. By shortening the electoral schedule, we are not ignoring the importance of democracy. We're simply managing it.
Alex Lane's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at alane@cavalierdaily.com.
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