Corbic

Have you decided who to vote for yet?

In lieu of the upcoming final debate is anyone out there, honestly, still undecided? Realistically, did either debate sway anyone one way or the other?

To be honest I watched neither the past two, nor will I watch the final debate. I decided long ago more or less based on party. Just like 90% of America, I already knew what party I was voting for even before the primaries started. What I have come to believe is that the entire debate process is pointless. After all, what do we come out of these debates talking about? The issues? The plan, the platform? Oh Hell No!

We talk about teleprompters, who smiled more, who was obnoxious, who was “presidential”, who had better one liners and of course who could time there political rhetoric correctly. I believe the era of electronic media has driven us to vote for the men and not for the ideas. We will never see a fat-dumpy balding President again. Never will we again have a squeaky voiced, lazy eyed President, hell we won’t even get one as a primary candidate.

One hundred years ago parties where forced to post up large boards with their platform, laying out exactly what they intended to do. This was really the primary way of picking a candidate…

Here is Lincoln’s 1860 Party Platform. This is by and large the only reason and exposure those who voted for him, voted for him. He didn’t have commercials, he didn’t have interviews – you may have saw a few snips in the newspapers and been lucky enough to see him at a convention. But when it came time to vote most people saw a few of these things posted on the walls around the ballot boxes.


http://cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/Repu...form_1860.html


So, in my off tangent, would it not be better for Presidents/Parties to continue this tradition. Why don’t we expect candidates to put together a PDF that lays out exactly what they want and intend to do. What laws they want enacted, what laws changed and what laws removed. Their view on taxing structures, major cultural issues and pretty much layout a 4 year business plan, line by line, subject by subject, year by year of what they hope to accomplish and how they will do this.


Then we can debate on how realistic this plan is as well as how much we agree with it. For the city official we can then go back and line by line look at what the accomplished, what they failed to accomplish and why. We can also evaluate the… “hey, you said you wanted to expand American oil drilling but you signed two laws restricting it”. You wouldn’t have to go back and review sound bites about “at what time did he say it was terrorists”. It would be plain as day – this is what you said you wanted to accomplish – this is what you ACTUALLY did.