In 2010, Conservative Party
leader David Cameron ousted Gordon Brown as prime minister of the United
Kingdom. The campaign lasted one month and virtually nothing was spent by
either campaign.
By comparison, in the 2012 U.S.
presidential election, candidates and PACs spent a total of $7 billion, four
times what was spent in the 2008 race.
Next week's election here will
conclude an 18-month campaign in which more billions of dollars will have been
spent and very little of substance has been dispensed. I don't think there's a
single American who isn't sick and tired of the whole affair and just wants it
to end.
What's worse, on November 9, Fox
News, CNN, MSNBC and talk radio will all begin to speculate on the leading
candidates in each party for the 2020 election, so it will start all over
again.
I guarantee it.
I'm not suggesting that America
buy into the UK system, or than one month is enough time to evaluate candidates
for "leader of the free world," but I see no reason why we can't
shorten the cycle to a more realistic and tolerable length. Maybe not one month
like the Brits, but certainly no more than six.
If you haven't heard everything
that Hillary and Trump had to offer during the last six months, you weren't
trying very hard. It's gotten so ugly and so redundant that I've had to try NOT
to hear it for the past several weeks.
And all that money has got to
go. $7 billion? Seriously? How many bridges would that repair? How many
homeless would it feed? How many veterans would it help?
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