I’m often wrong and I was very wrong in August 2008 when I wrote:
“We are well into the election season and I along with others was lamenting the length and cost of the process in the US. In Europe, it seems, campaigns are only a month or two long. A short election cycle sounds like a good idea but as I thought about it I realized it has a flaw. In a two month campaign we could elect a slick talking but dangerous person like John Edwards. In a one or two year campaign it is a lot harder for people with bad ideas or just smoke and mirrors to get through all of the hurdles. So the permanent campaign may be a price we have to pay to select the people most likely to be able to run the country.”
I wrote this in 2008 and I was wrong. Recent events (the election of Donald Trump) have shown that our longer election cycle does not produce better results than the shorter European cycle.
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I totally agree with your new point of view– to me these long election cycles only increase the need for more political fundraising– more dark money and more candidates beholden to their biggest donors.
And as we are seeing now it just perpetuates the political divide. The longer the campaigns just further entrench the sides to their corners.
The amount of time and effort to get elected is overwhelming. One could argue thats not so bad for someone running for the first time– but its sad to find out how much of an elected officials time in office is dedicated to campaigning and fundraising for themselves and their party mates. And we the people are paying their salaries while they are these virtual re election and fundraising campaign.
I am doing some volunteer work for a couple candidates to the Arizona State Legislature and I cant even believe how much time and effort, phoning, door knocking and fundraising they have to put in.. How about having all campaigns publicly funded with no fundraising allowed