Spending big on democracy

In an attempt to convince Americans he cares about the economy, he tried unsuccessfully to pre-empt the Obama campaign. He “suspended” his own campaign, said he would not accept campaign contributions, and would not be available for the nationally-televised debate until an agreement was reached. But, it was McCain who led Senate Republicans to deregulate numerous industries. Even if McCain takes no money for a few days, he willingly accepted $84 million in public funds; Obama is taking no public funds. Obama says he intends to be in Oxford, Miss., for the debate because “this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who ... will be responsible for dealing with this mess”.

Besides, says Obama, “it’s going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.” There may be another reason why McCain wanted to delay the debates. Bob Schieffer, CBS-TV’s most experienced political reporter and analyst, says he has strong information that delaying the first presidential debate would also have delayed the first vice-presidential debate the following week, and that the McCain camp may not believe Sarah Palin is ready for a debate on foreign policy issues.

Jesse Unruh (1922–1987), speaker of the California Assembly for eight years, said that “money is the mother’s milk of politics”. So we do have one option: we can stop producing milk. We’re going to tell whoever calls or e-mails us, begging for money for their grand and glorious campaign for the presidency that calling for even more money for election costs is truly un-American when the average person is going to be expected to pay for this debacle caused by a lax Administration and ineffective Congress.

We know who the candidates are, and what their positions are. The cost-per-vote in October for each candidate will be mega times the cost of just three months ago. If Sens. McCain and Obama are in touch with the average American as their campaign ads claim, they would realise that many of us don’t have an extra $25 to throw into a pool of money that will be used to send even more campaign ads at us.

Those of us who vigorously support our candidate and do have a few extra campaign dollars also know that the government bailout, no matter how many “protections” are built into it, would probably take care of whatever extra we have. If someone wearing a flag pin and campaign buttons comes around with her hand out, give her your heating bill.

If ever we need to be united, it’s now. Make the phone banks and e-mail serve the average American. Protest the candidates’ unending calls for more and more money from a public which has less and less. Refuse to support companies or organisations whose political action committees have already spent more than $2.5 billion this election cycle in lobbying expenses.

And let all candidates know that the next time to contribute to any campaign will be when government, no matter who is in charge, makes the lower- and middle-class individual its priority before corporations and the wealthy.