Bee-Dub, what you say about financing is correct if private individuals are allowed to finance campaigns and buy airtime for their campaign.

But that's not what I was suggesting.

I was suggesting a system where ALL campaign financing MUST come only from a public fund...not from private donors or party coffers or corporate donors but from a neutral public fund, and it must be distributed fairly and equally among ALL the candidates. That eliminates all corruption and lobbying right there. Every candidate would get exactly the same amount of funding and exactly the same amount of airtime through those public funds. A campaign would necessarily be a whole lot shorter, tremendously less expensive than it is now. Hell, it would probably cost 1 % of the money that is spent now on campaigns. There's a saving for you! It would involve all the candidates getting an equal amount of airtime to speak individually, presenting their ideas to the public...and to participate in open debates with one another...probably 3 to 5 such all-candidate debates would suffice to fully cover the issues. You could have one such televised debate a week, and that would give people time to think it all over.

Such a campaign would not need to last longer than a month or 6 weeks, which would be plenty of time for each candidate to get his or her message out to the voters.

So, you see, I am proposing a radically different approach to what you have at present, not just some minor tinkering with it.

In Canada we have national elections, and the entire campaign is limited to 6 weeks. It's more than enough, let me tell you! Everybody's had plenty of it by the 6 week mark. It's simply ludicrous how long an American presidential campaign goes on, and how much division and bad feeling is caused in the electorate during that time. It basically derails your government and society for a whole year. That's insane. And it's completely unnecessary to boot.

The only reason Americans put up with such utter nonsense is that they've become used to it, and they don't know any differently.