Maybe he ate some sour stewed prunes, but George Will was off his game, again. His latest essay was meant to be the usual, over-the-top Obama-bashing exercise that swirved off course into making wonderful arguments why we should have publicly financed elections. George Will's argument for public campaign financing.
For example, Mr. Will tells us how inexpensive it would be to pay for such a national, public election program. To pay for a two-year cycle for all elections is about $4.2 billion, and he shows us how doable that is:
That is about what Americans spend in one year on yogurt but less than they spend on candy in two Halloween seasons.
George Will is exactly right: we can easily afford that!
And George Will doesn't stop there, but gives us another fine example:
Procter & Gamble spent $8.6 billion on advertising in its most recent fiscal year.
Heck, if a single company spends that much for its ads, then clearly it would be easy for the United States of America to set up a fair, open, publicly funded system that lets all candidates for office have their say, and at the same time keeps out the ugly, democracy-strangling, legalized bribery schemes that now dominate our politics.
George Will is an odd bird: an American Tory, who bills himself as a thinking man's conservative who, nonetheless, always, always, always supports the Republican candidate. His erudite musings mask the fact that his political life is indistinguishable from that of Karl Rove.
Back during the American Revolution, had he been around, George Will would have been one of those "loyal" subjects who left the unruly colonies to return to England. Sitting around in his country manor with a curly powdered wig on his head, sipping tea, and composing broadsides entitled: Why Thomas Jefferson and George Washington must be hanged! He never has gotten used to the idea that "the rabble" has a say regarding who should have power in government. The whole consent-of-the-governed notion is so ridiculous, so absurd to him that he has spent his whole career trying to get all the power back into the hands of the knowing few at the top, the people's betters, our permanent elite.
George Will is a mega-millionaire media celebrity. He has more media exposure, among the "news" shows, than anyone else these past 30 years, and has made a pile doing so. Why he opposes taxes for rich people has as much to due with his own hefty portfolio than anything else, probably. You know the type: his nose in the air, stick up his ass, snarl twisting his lip, an I-got-mine sneer to his discourse. He argues that anonymous campaign contributions given by global corporations is just fine, yet we, the people, don't want influence peddling activities wrecking our Republic. Oil oligarchs' money will guarantee that green energy never happens here. Totalitarian money from Asia will make sure that our economy will keep bleeding jobs and our gigantic trade deficits won't be reduced.
The deal is, we want our government to "represent" us. And George Will tells us that we can easily make that happen, that Americans spend on our political advocacy:
Much less than they spend on potato chips ($7.1 billion a year).