Presidential Campaigns II: Financial Matter

This is long overdue, but here's my continuation on presidential campaigns. I spoke briefly in the last post about the amount of money being pumped into presidential campaigns. Most of this money is used to slander the opposing candidate. Where does it come from? A fair portion is provided by third party sources hoping to gain an influence on the future decisions of said candidate should the individual become president. First off, just because someone provides funding for a person's campaign doesn't mean they need to honor the donation with later legislation. The donater provided the candidate with the money because they thought they were the best person to promote their interests. That means they respect whatever decision the candidate makes when in office. It is like hiring a head football coach for a college program. When that is done, the school is putting its faith in the individual to lead the program as best as he sees fit. If that means when the game is on the line that he chooses to go for the 2-pt conversion to win the game instead of kicking the extra point and going to overtime, the school needs to accept that. They don't expect the coach to ask them what they think he should do in said situation. They're paying him to make the right decision. If in the long run, they determine he is not the best choice, they may remove him for another coach. If a campaign funder determines their candidate is no longer the best choice for future elections, they can support another individual. Still, the candidate has no reason to alter their decisions based on who provided them with cash. I know this isn't likely to happen seeing how corrupt individuals are and how much they like to play the game for themselves, but I can hope there are still some decent people out there.

Secondly, we spend millions, if not billions, of dollars on advertising, et cetera, for these campaigns. Then we decide the government is in debt and people are starving. Why not make the presidential campaigns more useful than seeing who can throw the most money to push their public image? There are a couple different directions this can go in. The first is to limit the amount permitted to be spent on the campaign. This option allows those with lesser finances to actually stand a chance in the campaign. They don't have to own an oil company to pay for their election. Then feel the need to influence the market in favor of their holdings to make up for their losses. The second direction is to put a stipulation that any money spent on the campaign must be matched to charities, taxes, et cetera. At least this way, all the money thrown into an individual's election would be providing some service to the general public because right now the commercials just annoy me rather than provide any sort of service.

I doubt any sort of policies along these lines will be accepted any time soon. Still, I think they could greatly improve the usefulness of presidential elections. While the Roman bureaucracy had plenty of corruption, they use to make individuals fund their election campaigns on their own. Then when they served in office, they received no compensation. This was because it was seen as the responsibility of the more fortunate to provide and care for those without as much. I think there are times when this vision is lost in our current politics. The United States Constitution was founded on these ideals. Every individual involved in the Continental Congresses and the early national conventions were well educated in the politics of the Greeks and Romans. Maybe our school systems need to spend a little more time focusing on these aspects than telling us how bad the cold war era was.