link From Marketplace and Freakonomics. Hardly according to the typical NPR stereotype, the claim is that money doesn't buy elections. Sure, money is related to success but it doesn't directly cause it. Read on...
Can having more money than your opponent cause you to win an election in and of itself? No. Can having more money than your opponent and spending on good advertising tip an election? Yes.
I've never really seen the stereotype. NPR seems fairly ballanced to me. Usually, when they have someone from one side talking about something, they'll have someone from the other side to rebut. Additionally, when interviewing people, the interviewers are pretty good at playing devil's advocate. "That's all well and good, but there are some who would say....". I get the feeling that a lot, if not most of the people involved in NPR are liberal, but I don't think the coverage is any more biased than any other news company...and a hell of a lot less than some.
Sure. In a close election with well-targeted advertising money, having more money certainly can't hurt. But it seems it's good policies that attract the money in the first place, success that keeps the money rolling in, and good tactics that keep the success going. It's definitely a complicated equation but money certainly doesn't buy elections.
The fact that you're not even a half-assed joke of a contender unless you're obscenely rich is a fatal flaw.
Some of the debates determine who is a viable candidate by fund raising - so if you don't meet the mark there, they exclude you. Because you know it's not like the smart guys who haven't raised a lot of money by begging and promising things need the air time....
But we all have to admit. It's a lot like how junior high separates out the cool kids and jocks from the nerds and the rest of the geeks. It doesn't always make sense and follow any set rules. Rich kids don't always become the most popular. Sometimes they're too nerdy or unathletic. Sometimes the poor kid has a great sense of humor and is really good-looking. Sometimes the good-looking kid sucks at sports and is dumber than a stump. My point is that just saying money guarantees success in politics is too simplistic and, just by looking at results, is easily disproven.
But the lack of money guarantees failure, and that is a deal-killing problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Not necessarily. It's the lack of ideas that guarantees failure. And do you really want a candidate with no ideas? Or, worse, ideas that are so unpopular that he can't generate support?
Support among the insanely rich and their megacorporations is FAR from the only measure of viability.
True. That's why you take the power of the internet and other mass media that's broken / breaking the back of traditional information sources and do something creative to get your message out there, bypassing them. Your comment about the "insanely rich", for instance, doesn't wash or we'd have a president Forbes, for instance, yet he couldn't manage much support. Perot as well, was known more for his other attributes than his money, even though he'd certainly qualify as "insanely rich". Example after example shows, in the real world, that money doesn't guarantee results. It's associated and certainly follows it around, but isn't a predictor.
It's a huge feedback loop. It starts small and keeps repeating. By the time Obama got to the presidential campaign, he was already poised to rake in record amounts of money. I remember seeing Obama at the 2004 Dem Convention and thinking he had the personality to draw a lot of attention. Because he could do that, he could convince people he was worth investing in. All candidates try to do that. The more popular their ideas and the better they are at presenting them, the more support they get. The more support they get, the more they can try to spread their ideas around. Eventually, they're bound to get the attention of the really rich and even corporations. These groups, like all those individuals will either support the candidate because they're already like them or because they want to sway them to their opinion. But simply saying "take the money" out of the process doesn't fix the innate problem of human corruptibility and it doesn't really address the fact that money doesn't even guarantee success for a politician in the first place.
So let's take Big Money PACs out of the equation, limit how much personal wealth a Romney can spend, and see what happens, eh?
Oh, it'll never happen, but it would be interesting to see how many politicians actually could get reelected on the basis of $5 donations from real people.
Ah, but how many competent managers stay broke? Let's face it, America is a big, complex nation with a lot of people, a lot of resources, and a big government. It is part of a planet full of nations and organizations that all have their own agendas. The last thing we need is some itinerant philosopher poet with a 157 IQ to run it. You want someone who can Make Shit Happen. And anyone who can Make Shit Happen is going to be able to amass a large War Chest to run a bid for office.
But to make the blanket statement that being wealthy automatically implies a practical, capable intellect is just boneheadedly stupid. And since you can't equate "wealthy" with "smart and capable," it's unwise to exclude someone just because they don't happen to be rich.
Your statement implies that the people most qualified to do the job are immensely successful monetarily, when in fact the best person for the job might be the one who isn't really concerned with getting rich.
