The Review

Issue date: 11/2/07 Section: Editorial

We are fortunate to live in a country founded on the principles of democracy. This is a country where we have the right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. This is a country where we have the right to free speech and the belief that everyone's vote matters.

Everyone has a right to their opinion, and their vote should matter. As the 2008 presidential election draws near, we are all pressured to do our civic duty and cast our ballot for the leader of the free world. We all should choose who we want to take over the executive branch. Unfortunately, by the time we enter the ballot box our choices have already been dictated.

The campaigning for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination is going on right now. If you're a Democrat, are you going to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? I don't bother to mention Joe Biden, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich. Chances are, unless you're majoring in political science, you didn't know about Dodd, Richardson or Gravel. I had a problem even finding a comprehensive list of the Democratic candidates online.

The Web site Democrats.org did not have a list of the Democratic primary candidates. It did, however, have a link that listed the Republican presidential candidates who each had their own page on the Web site in which they were politically hung in effigy. I'm offended that the Democratic Party cares more about telling me the evils of Republicans than the virtues of its own candidates.

I've come to feel that by the time I vote, I have already been limited in my choices. Even in the primary, I'm more likely to vote for Obama than Biden simply because I've been told that Ol' Joe is a second-tier candidate. For years, we have accepted the same generalizations about candidates and swallowed it down without ever pausing to digest exactly what made a person a second-tier candidate.

What makes Biden, a senator since 1972 who has served on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee for three decades, a second-tier candidate compared to Obama, a first-term senator who was elected in 2004 after serving in the Illinois State senate for eight years?

Money.

Obama has raised millions of dollars more than Biden, or Kucinich or any other candidate except Clinton. I don't mean to demean the democratic process, but the presidency is bought with money used to pay for campaign ads and coverage. Unless you already have huge recognition (Rudy Giuliani, Clinton) your chances of winning the primary without a sizable bankroll is almost nonexistent.

The Oct. 31 article titled "Biden displays foreign policy expertise" in The News Journal stated that Biden received three of 38 questions in the first 75 minutes of a two-hour debate at Drexel University, 30 miles from his home.

Even as a local candidate, he did not receive anything close to a balanced amount of exposure. The media subconsciously perpetuates the second-tier candidate theory, and do not give those candidates an opportunity to sway voters.

And so, voters are forced to choose the candidate we can tolerate who we have heard of, instead of an unknown candidate who could be the next Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. The only solution to this problem is to take money out of the equation.

Let's limit campaign fundraising, and provide an equal opportunity for all candidates to speak to the voters.

In a perfect world, candidates would all receive equal exposure in the media. If the political parties were forced to spend equal money on each candidate during the primaries to educate the populace, voters would get to know all of the candidates and make an informed decision. This would make Obama or Clinton's campaign stand or fall on the issue of their character and polices instead of how much money they can raise to saturate the media with advertisements.

We need to make candidates stand by what they say. Some kind of prospectus should be put out a few days before the primary and general election that lists the candidate's stance on issues, and lists any time they have voted or spoke out against a promise they made. Ideally, this would be done by an independent government-sanctioned group to lend credibility to the study. What a candidate promises in Atlanta at an NAACP rally should be the same as what they say to farmers in Iowa.

The second change that should be made involves limiting campaign fundraising. A cap of $2 to 5 million would be sufficient for candidates to get their message out to voters who do not have access to traditional media. Anything over the cap should go to a charity of the candidate's choice.

With more than six million children in the United States without healthcare, it's unforgivable to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the process of just one person to become president.

We need to change the way America's officials are elected. Hopefully someday we will be able to vote for the candidate we feel is the best choice, instead of the lesser of two evils.



Tucker Liszkiewicz is a copy desk chief for The Review. His viewpoints do not necessarily represent those of the Review staff. Send comments to tucker@udel.edu.

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