Lets Talk About Citizens United

[Mister Agenda]

In hindsight, the best way to have kept money in politics proportionate to what it was prior to 2002 would have been not to enact McCain Feingold in the first place. It's the poster child for the law of unintended consequences. Unfortunately, getting rid of it now is unlikely to have much impact now that all these new methods of getting money into the political system have been devised as a response to it.

I have a solution to the problem and it's really simple yet will transform American democracy to make it more robust, more responsive to the people and more focused on real issues and not talking points and sound bytes.

Ban
All
Paid
Political
Media
Ads.

No TV ads. No newspaper ads. No billboards. Campaign finances would be limited to be just enough to buy bumper stickers and yard signs to hand out to supporters. That's it.

Maybe. The problem with unintended consequences is that although they seem obvious in hindsight, most of us don't see them coming. Were I an unscrupulous oil tycoon who could no longer spend millions on influencing elections, what other avenues could I pursue to get the legislation I want, given that I have millions to spend and teams of lawyers and analysts to devise options for me? I'm not dismissing your suggestion though, I'm just cautious. People are wily, particularly when given an incentive to be so, but your proposal may leave them with no legal options.

You shouldn't be able to spend money to buy more speech than your fellow citizen. The Koch brothers can make picket signs and protest on the street corner like everyone else.

Or form an organization to persuade people to volunteer to do it for them. That doesn't seem to violate your proposal.

Madison Ave soundbites littering our TV time would be replaced by bi-weekly debates during the campaign season where substantive issues would be discussed.

When you're king of America? I have a less ambitious proposal. Reverse the legislation that allows network TV to run ads during the news. It used to be a requirement in return for the bandwidth that stations had to devote a particular amount of time to the news. Putting ads in made news teams into ratings hounds. That's fixable, and Constitutional.

These debates should also be done under oath. Knowingly lying to the people during a political debate should be punished with the charge of perjury.

And that will be the end of debates, as everyone will be too afraid of litigation to risk one, unless you know of an infallible way to distinguish between 'knowingly lying' and 'made a mistake'. At least you're putting thought into it, though. If this was a brainstorming session, I'd say leave that one on the board for now.