Vote For Edwards! (No, Not That One...)

Ezra got himself a sit-down with Mrs. Edwards and posted up the entire interview. There's been lots of talk, especially back last year when it was revealed that her cancer had reappeared, that Elizabeth is really the motor that drives the Edwards machine. She would not let him quit on account of her health. The campaign really reflects her passion, her thoughts, and John is only a mirror of those things, like Plato's shadows on the wall of the cave.

When I read things like

Congressmen take the money because they think it'll help them get votes. If they think the votes will be taken away from them rather than given to them, they'll vote the right way. And my guess is that John won't have to visit that many districts to make that happen Now, there may be some congressmen who vote that way out of conviction, and if so, let them defend it to their constituents. But if it's really all about money, they'll be outed.

it makes me very sad, indeed, that I don't have the chance to vote for Mrs. Edwards this time around. Either way, hopefully we can find a way to get her some influence in the next administration. She is one smart cookie.

This might be the single smartest thing I've read this year about politics. The problem with politics is not money, per se. The problem is the way that money buys votes.

The briefest explanation of the democratic ideal, to me, is that politicians adopt positions, based either on their conviction or on the belief that they are popular. People vote for the politician who holds the views most like their own. Thus, popular opinions are enacted into law. The competition is for votes, and the currency is the candidates' opinions.

There are many, many ways in which the American system falls short of this ideal. But the worst, to my mind, is the way that votes can be bought using money, rather than opionions, as currency. People, just by virtue of being human beings, with all the strange and funny fallacies that that evolutionary history puts on their psychology, are too easily swayed by a smart commercial, a funny quip, or a sound bite. It's much easier to plant a false impression in someone's mind than to unplant it.

The best way to 'fix' this problem would be to improve people, so that they are more interested in digging deeper into issues, finding out when a 'he-said, she-said' is really a 'he-lied, she-didn't'. The least ideal, but easiest, is to move all the way from the ultimate cause to the proximate one, and remove the money which makes so easy the corruption of the ideal.

I love that Elizabeth Edwards is aiming for that first goal; even if you can't fix people, maybe if you fight back hard enough, and passionately enough, you can make people a little better than they are.

I don't know if it would work or not, but it's a damn admirable goal. I hope someone in the Obama campaign is taking notes.