How I think campaigns should workFollow

There's two sides to every political campaign: The Show (for the vast majority of idiots), and the real campaign, which actually involves political issues. Candidates dedicate their time to the side that the majority will understand.

sadly. it is not the candidates fault.

it is OUR fault.

we listen to the lies because we WANT to. we vote based on the negitivity we hear, not the positives for the same reason we will stop to watch a car wreck, but pass by without slowing for someone actually doing a good deed, like stopping to let someone cross a street.

we live for strife. we seek out strife. we thrive on discourse.

why? because it makes us feel better about our own pathetic lives.

its our fault. we reward bad behaviour. and untill we can collectively stop rewarding it, we can expect it.

we may be predominantly christians, but be behave like predominatly sinners.

Sure it's the publics fault that politiciams are lying scum worth nothing more than a .44 in the skull.

It's the Media's fault for ignoring these obvious lies to pander to their agendas.

Perhaps the candidates should be sentenced to cleaning all our houses.

I think the OP's point would be that McCain and his campaign manager wouldn't be able to confer with each other. So his manager runs an ad doing such-and-such, and McCain says something contradictory on one of his...broadcasts, and the campaign falls apart. They might run an ad condemning their opponent's pro-choice stance, for example, and then McCain says on tape that he's really not that opposed to sensible abortion use (which hypothetically could be his view) and his campaign looks hypocritical. It would in fact be risky to run ads declaring definite campaign statements, since all that could change depending on what McCain says in isolation.

The reason I don't like it is because the people in control of the detention centre would also be in control of the public's perception of the candidates. If you have a centre run by Republicans they aren't going to portray Obama very well when he does his "broadcasts". They'd make McCain look like Lincoln reincarnate and Obama look like a prisoner. You're just putting the control of the public's perception into different, less reliable hands.

Overall it seems highly impractical. It might make a nice publicity stunt for some pseudo-reality TV version of the presidential elections in a dystopian idiocratic future, but even then it'd be dishonest. Really, worrying about a candidate's personal views isn't the point. Like Allegory said, the candidates have a massive staff working for them, and when they're in the Presidency they get an even larger body of advisors and aides to help them make decisions. It would be very hard to maintain a strong personal view in the middle of a 2,000-man organisation constructed to tell you what your view is or should be, especially if you're aware of your own falliability.

Which is actually pretty pathetic. If I wasn't sold already on who I'm voting for, 6 weeks would not be long enough for me to actually see what each group thinks is the correct course of action to take on various issues. 6 weeks is enough time for them to tell you what they want to promise and that's about it. No how to get there though.

6 weeks isn't enough to watch an interview, read their website's itemization of the issues, and hold several debates?

That's not really what I'm talking about though. The assumption in this idea is that the method of campaigning wouldn't change if you changed the conditions of the campaign rules. That's a silly assumption.

What would happen is that the very nature of campaigning would change. The candidate would give nothing but pretty and empty speeches from his isolated position. They'd become masters at saying nothing in fact, while their campaign managers would do all the spinning and campaigning out in the real world.

This is why I said it would ensure that all candidates were "empty suits". An empty suit is a person who himself doesn't mean anything. He's just a placeholder. The candidates themselves would cease to be relevant. You'd be voting for "candidate A" or "candidate B", with the differences being whatever their media folks had done during the campaign.

You'd see *more* of the very things that the idea is attempting to prevent. Because the candidates themselves would have less impact on their chances of winning. The ability of their campaign managers to manipulate the publics perception would become the biggest factor in an election.




I understood the idea just fine. I may not have been clear enough that I was responding to what I know would happen as a result, not just to the idea itself. You can say "but he'll be able to speak about current events", but IMO, what you'd have is candidates who'd speak only in the abstract about those events. Their own statements would become less and less relevant to the actual process of the campaign.


Look at it another way. Imagine if you are sitting in a box and are required to present your opinion blindly. The rest of us are in this open forum and can carry on a conversation about what you said without you hearing any of it. How relevant would your contributions to any given thread be? Pretty minimal, right? We'd all still be attacking or defending you statements, and *that* would be the bulk of the conversation. Those attacks and defenses would all be done by proxy and those proxies would effectively win or lose the debate for you.


That's the problem with the idea. It makes the candidate himself less relevant to the outcome. That's why I think it's a really bad idea.

Only one party has actually released it's full agenda/campaign so far. We're 3 weeks away. As well, there is no debates, just a debate.

We have the politicians we deserve.

Seriously, if they're all so **** and useless and lying scumbags, become one. It's not that hard, join a party, start campaigning, run for local seats, climb your way up. If you're in a country that doesn't have such a strong bipartisan divide as the US, start your own party campaigning on the issues that matter to you.

It's a bit too easy to whine that all politicians are useless while doing absolutely nothing about it. It doesn't take anything special to become a politician. If Palin can do it, by God, then surely anyone can.