What, the Corporate Media is trying to determine who the viable presidential candidates will be? This can only change if we have two things: public financing of elections and free network air time to the candidates. I’d really love to hear what the candidates have to say aside from the eight-minute interviews they’ve been giving lately on those paragons of political reporting: The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc.
When Clinton blew his sax on Arsenio, little did I think that would be the beginning of political discourse on the same plane as actors touting their latest movie. Hell, with the success of the Governator, we might soon see both promotions taking place at once! (“Thanks, Jay. I’d just like to tell everyone that my latest film, _A Bunch Of Shit Blows Up_, opens this Friday, and to remind everyone to get to the polls and cast your presidential vote for me this Tuesday!”)
Given Americans’ love of sports and playoff brackets, maybe our Presidential campaigns should be more like March Madness in college hoops. We start with a pool of sixteen candidates, separated into two “conferences” – Liberal (Democrats, Greens) vs. Conservative (Republicans, Libertarians) perhaps. The regular season starts months prior to the election. Each Tuesday, the candidates are paired up and face off in a thirty-minute debate on TV. The thirty minutes are divided in the usual act I-II-III sequence of a sitcom, to accommodate TV commercials and the short attention spans of the viewers. Each act focuses on a particular issue, so three issues are tackled each episode. This gives us eight debates (four hours worth) each Tuesday.
We set up a rotating schedule that allows each candidate to debate each of their fifteen opponents. The first seven weeks features intraconference debates (Liberal vs. Liberal, Conservative vs. Conservative), then the last eight weeks features the interconference debates (Liberal vs. Conservative). Each debate ends with an “American Idol” style phone-in vote for the public, the leading vote getter is the winner of that debate. 15 weeks of debates, 3 issues each debate, and 8 debates a week give us 45 issues covered and each candidate gets equal face time.
Then we get to the playoffs in October. The candidates are seeded based on their regular season debate records, with the playoff divided into the Conservative and Liberal brackets. The first week, (Sweet Sixteen) the highest-seeded Liberal faces off against the lowest-seeded Liberal in a one-hour Tuesday debate, the same occurs for Conservatives on Wednesday. The next week (Elite Eight) the phone-in vote-winners move on, debating each other according to their bracket position. The next week (Final Four), we increase the debate time to two hours as the two remaining Liberals and two remaining Conservatives debate each other. The two winners meet in the National Championship, which will be the familiar two-candidate national election we’re all familiar with.
One problem: this year, the conservatives would only offer up George W. Bush, leaving some of the Conservative slots empty. If so, then any of the debate matchups featuring Conservative vs. Conservative might just be thirty minutes of speech time (I wonder if Shrub would lose a phone-in vote in a debate against himself?) Anyway, here’s this year’s November Madness Bracket:
LIBERAL BRACKET
(1) Howard Dean
(8) Dennis Kucinich
(2) Wesley Clark
(7) Al Sharpton
(3) Dick Gephart
(6) Carol Moseley-Braun
(4) John Edwards
(5) John Kerry
CONSERVATIVE BRACKET
(1) George W. Bush
(8) Unnamed Libertarian
(2) Joe Lieberman (he fits better in this bracket than the other…)
(7) Unnamed Christian Right-Wing Nut Job (just to play the whole Christian vs. Jew thing, it’ll be great for ratings!)
(3) John McCain (with a playoff system, he might be enticed to run)
(6) Pat Buchanan (just for ol’ times sake)
(4) Arnold Schwarzenegger (who will bow out if he makes the Final Four, since the Constitution forbids him being president — thank you, Jefferson!)
(5) Gary Coleman (just for the fun of it!)
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