Quote:
Originally posted by Fred181
Ineteresting... I don't want run this off topic, but why should a person be able to spend even all of their own money? I realize that this is America and freedom and what not, but there should be restrictions on how much of even their own money the canidates can spend. Otherwise what we get are people like Bush (or insert any other old-money wealthy president here) that are only in office becuase they have the money to spend on advertisements and buying off the competition.
People should not be able to BUY the presidency. We institute campaign finance laws becuase we don't want big corporations to own the presidency, but we don't care that the presidents themselves are merely buying their way in.
I think that there should be a national pot that people contribute money to and each (viable) canidate gets a share of that money. When it comes time to decide who is elected, we use.... AN ELECTION to decide, not who spent the most money on advertisements
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I just believe the people are smart enough to elect a person based on issues, policy or just their like or dislike.
I also think only an idiot would spend his fortune to get elected president and if he needlesly threw money around people would wonder what he would do with the treasury's tax money. So while he could spend all his money he should show where it went and it should be regulated to some degree. (Ex. you can spend this much of your money on advertising, this much on travel and so on.)
I also think that part of Network TV's responsibilty is to give federal candidates and gubenatorial candidates (Reps, Senators, Pres.) free and equal airtime. So say Kerry gets 3 30 second ads on each network between 8-830 Bush would get 3- 30 second commercials between 8:30 and 9 and so on.
Newspapers and Mags should give each candidate exactly the same advertising space either run side by side or on alternating days.
That won't work because the media makes so much on political ads it's pathetic. But I do believe that is a way to control spending and campaign finances.