Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Endless Campaigns
A South Dakota newspaper reports here that Senator Tom Daschle has already spent more than a million bucks in his re-election campaign. This is more than a year before the election and before he even has an opponent!
Now, to be fair, Mr. Daschle has been targetted by the other party as someone they want to take out, so he's probably just trying to bolster his standing. But really, wouldn't politics be better for everyone if we had shorter campaign seasons? One way to accomplish that would be to set limits on how much campaigns can spend. That way, incumbents wouldn't be tempted to spend so much money so early on, thus extending the campaign season earlier and earlier.
To his credit, Tom Daschle has voted for a constitutional amendment that would set mandatory spending limits on campaign. Here is a link to the voting records of all US Senators on that amendment.
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A South Dakota newspaper reports here that Senator Tom Daschle has already spent more than a million bucks in his re-election campaign. This is more than a year before the election and before he even has an opponent!
Now, to be fair, Mr. Daschle has been targetted by the other party as someone they want to take out, so he's probably just trying to bolster his standing. But really, wouldn't politics be better for everyone if we had shorter campaign seasons? One way to accomplish that would be to set limits on how much campaigns can spend. That way, incumbents wouldn't be tempted to spend so much money so early on, thus extending the campaign season earlier and earlier.
To his credit, Tom Daschle has voted for a constitutional amendment that would set mandatory spending limits on campaign. Here is a link to the voting records of all US Senators on that amendment.
