It's the Constitution, Stupid (by Marty Kaplan at HuffPost)

Marty Kaplan

05.09.2007
It's the Constitution, Stupid (54 comments )

"Okay, this is a lightning round. How many of you believe in evolution? Raise your hands. Thank you. Now how many of you believe in the Rapture? Is that hand up or down, Senator McCain? Okay, thanks. Now this is multiple choice, so please listen to the whole question first. How many pairs of chromosomes do you think people should have: 23, less than 23, or more than 23?

Ready? Okay, who says 23? One, two, three, four, five, six hands. Less than 23? I'm sorry Mayor Giuliani, you can only pick one. All right, who says more than 23?"

Can you think of a stupider way for a great nation to choose its leader than the one we have?

We pore over polls whose margins of error are plus or minus 5%, even plus or minus 8%, and pretend that the results -- which are essentially a wash, and which from week to week are in fact a mute still-life, not snapshots of a thrilling trend line -- actually mean something. We pay attention to national head-to-head polls, as if the popular vote actually had anything to do with the electoral college system that produces presidents.

"Quick answers, just a show of hands. Which of you, as an adult, has had a gun in your house? Thank you, hands down. Now this one: Which of you has been to a NASCAR race? Really, all of you? Okay, one more: Who here has a penis? Raise your hands."

When it's not polls we're using to measure candidates' presidentiality, it's money. Since most of the money raised goes to pay for television ads, fundraising is actually a proxy of a candidate's ability to pay the ransom charged by local television stations. The public gives tv stations free and exclusive use of the electromagnetic spectrum; the stations turn around and sell that spectrum to candidates; the candidates, in turn, ask the public to give them the money to buy that time from the stations. In other words, not only does the public receive no money from the stations for their right to use the public's own airwaves; the stations actually receive money from the public -- now approaching $2 billion per election cycle -- as a thank-you gift for promising to use their licenses in the public interest. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/its-the-constitution-st_b_48016.html