Michael Ian Black: Make America Sane Again—Cut Election Races to Two Months

Well, we’ve reached another electoral milestone. After two years of campaigning, fewer than 50 days now remain until Americans go to the voting booths, wait for the polls to close, endure hours of election coverage followed by days of uncertainty, followed by lawsuits and the potential for political unrest. God, time flies when you’re having fun.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

I was watching a YouTube video of an American couple (their channel is called “Baguette Bound’) who moved to France, and they were highlighting some of the things they prefer in France to America. Among the ho-hum reasons, like not being worried your kid is going to shot at school, they pointed out an interesting fact: French political campaigns only last a few weeks.

A few weeks? How do they do that? How do they even have time to start baseless rumors about Haitian immigrants in so little time? How do they manage to nominate and replace a candidate so quickly? How do they even have time to figure out which Islamophobes to invite on the plane in such a short amount of time. Seems crazy.

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I looked into it a little bit further. Turns out France isn’t alone. Lots of countries have short campaigns. And not just little countries where it might be hard to get around and shake all the hands and kiss all the babies. By law, Canada must conclude their elections within 50 days. U.K. election campaigns last around five weeks. In Japan it’s just 12 days. But here we are living with an endless campaign cycle. As soon as one ends, the next begins.

Maybe that made sense when a candidate’s message took time to disseminate across a broad and untamed land. “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” is a terrific slogan, but only if people get to hear it. These days, though, with instant communication everywhere on the globe, why do we need endless months of fish frys, donor dinners, country fairs, and stadium rallies? Why do we need presidential polling two years out of an election? We don’t!

Why not simplify the whole thing?

Here's my proposal. I call it “2Pac,” which stands for “Two months to Pick A Candidate.” One month for primaries. One month for the general election. Two months. Look, I understand it takes longer than that for the Bachelorette to hand out her final rose, and that decision is, arguably, less important than picking a president.

But The Bachelorette is only one hour per week. With our 24-hour news cycle, there’s no reason we can’t go whole hog for two months, make our choice, and get the hell out. Kind of like what we do with the Olympics. Nobody cares about the Olympics except for the two weeks when that’s all anybody cares about. We can do that with our politics.

Think about all the money 2Pac would save. Why do candidates have to fundraise so much? To pay for the endless goddamned campaign. Well, if you condense that to two months total, then you’re reducing your expenditures by quite a lot. Which means you’re not as beholden to your big donors and their dark money. Get rid of dark money, get rid of people like the Koch Brothers or Leonard Leo or, if you prefer, George Soros and his disgusting project of supporting global democracy.

Think about all the mental stress 2Pac would save on the American population. I mean, how much time do all of us think about these candidates? So. Much. Time. What if we got rid of most of that? The horse-race nature of the election would still be there, but condensed—it would be the difference between a horse marathon and a horse sprint. Nobody wants to watch a horse marathon.

2Pac would also be good for the political process as a whole because politicians wouldn’t be nearly as beholden to party leaders for their financial support. They could spend less time politicking and more time legislating. Might we see more consensus between the parties if they weren’t spending so much effort calling each other names, a tactic necessitated by the constant need to raise cash.

Further, we should let the government finance the campaigns. Once the candidates are selected, each team gets a predetermined amount of cash to spend however they want. If Trump decides to pocket his cash, that’s fine by me. Every dollar spent much be accounted for; for any dollar you spent above that, you lose a vote. But there’s no outside political spending allowed. No outside advocacy groups advertisements during the official campaign month. Is that constitutional? I don’t know. I mean, we don’t let cigarettes advertise on television anymore, and political campaigns are at least as toxic as smoking.

There will be some downsides. Obviously, cable news will take a hit. That can’t be helped. They’ll be forced to cut down on their campaign coverage and increase their output of satirical comedy shows, such as the terrific new Have I Got News For You, airing Saturdays at 9 on CNN. Maybe you think, “Wait a minute, Michael. That’s your show. Was this entire column a way for you to plug your new television show?”

To which I would respond, “No comment.”

They say the presidency ages people, but I wonder if it’s not the presidency so much as all the campaigning. I mean, White House life actually seems pretty cushy. Sure, the decisions are tough but you’ve got a private bowling alley. That should even things out. The campaigning, though, the arm twisting, the begging. That’s got to wipe years off of anybody.

No wonder American life expectancy is trending downwards. These campaigns are killing us all. Don’t we deserve a few months off every year from the incessant bickering, name calling, and fart sniffing?

The French love nothing more than endless arguments about bullshit, but they’ve somehow figured out a way to select their leader in less than a couple months. We’re the people who want things done NOW, yet for this one, exhausting thing, we’re content to let these political consultants and advertising agencies and pollsters take their own sweet time while they’re lining their own sweet pockets? We can be better. It’s what 2Pac would’ve wanted.