Presidential Campaigns I: Knowing Your Candidate

This is the first of a series about presidential campaigns in the United States. Quite frankly, there's a lot of things about them that bother me. Today, I will discuss the pointlessness of the campaigns. Afterall, the entire intention of the campaigns is to allow the common populace to learn about the various candidates that they might make an informed decision for the next President of the United States. How do the campaigns accomplish this? They use a handful of debates accompanied with a billion commercials.

Now the commercials I must say serve absolutely no purpose other than to line the pockets of the advertisements' producers and the media companies which distribute them to the masses. Most of the time, these commercials consist of a load of lies and slanders. I cannot say that I have ever learned anything about an individual from a commercial. Commercials are useful for brand(name) recognition. Everyone already knows the names of the presidential candidates. If they don't, they shouldn't be voting in the first place. Commercials do not inform the masses about the character of the company in the advertisement. For this, we go to other sources. So what other sources do we have to get to know our political candidates?

The candidates travel the country competing in a series of debates aired on national television. Once again, money pours into the hosting city, the hosting venue, and the media. At least in this case, most of it does not come directly from the presidential candidates themselves. At least it could be said it provides a small boost to the economy. However, how much is learned from these debates? Many times, our candidates get so caught up in competing with their counterpart that their focus ends up more on attacking the last thing they said than speaking truthfully of their opinions on the topic at hand.

Honestly, we could probably learn more about the candidates by having them write a weekly blog. It would be cheaper (I will get into the monetary considerations in a later blog). It would also allow the masses to learn more about the political topics of the day than a few hours of debate. Think of it in another light. When you take a college history class, you are assigned a textbook to read. You do not listen to two professors debate whether the Greeks or the Romans influenced western civilization more. I would prefer to read a well-organized explanation of a candidate's viewpoints on the "War on Terror" than let them bicker for an hour about how each intends to remove US involvement in a timely manner (whatever that is supposed to mean).

These are the reasons you will find I hardly follow the presidential campaigns. I could spend hours upon hours to learn very little that is likely false the moment the candidate is elected anyways. For this reason, I spend my time working on more constructive projects. For now, the best option I can offer is making the best guess one can on a candidate and then to let the individual's actions in office speak for an future opinion I form for the next election.