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Such a system would never work, even if we had a Supreme Court willing to push for/enforce the rules of such a system. I mean how would you get around these issues?
1) Ok so we let all serious candidates debate, so how do parties pick a 'serious candidate'?
2) You can't enforce no advertising for the election, because for one thing the Internet would do it anyway no matter how hard you tried to stop it, lots of blogs and sites met to influence your vote in the elections would show up, even if you try to constantly shut down such illegal advertising the message would still get across to enough people. Also what about political blogs like Daily Kos for example, sure look like advertising to me. It's not a phone call either, but it speaks to others to send a message.
3) Fox News, and other politically biased media on the TV and Radio. That does more damage to candidates and our democracy then campaign cash in a lot of cases, they'll continue to tell people what to think and become even stronger without money being involved.
4) The regular news is biased in favor of controversy and what will bring in ratings now, hence they tend to try to reinforce the political mood. I mean look at how they jumped on the bash the stimulus and bash health care trains, more often then not they were content to just air the lies about those things without correcting them. That to amounts to the same kind of TV ads your system would ban, your system would make these powers even stronger.
5) What about going around campaigning? You aren't clear on this, but you ban other parts of campaigning, like phone calls which are used to get out the vote on election day.
6) There's also problems with debates, look at some of the debates during the presidential primary in 08, remember when the media spent the first third of a democratic debate asking Hillary/Obama/Edwards all 'gotcha' questions about nonissues met to get them to say something stupid to make a headline, rather then to discuss actual policy issues? Until the debate format is changed to let/make candidates get into real detail about serious solutions to our problems, we won't get much value from debates.
7) I recall reading that the first presidential debate aired on TV was Kennedy vs Nixon, the people watching TV thought Kennedy was the clear winner, the people listening to the radio thought Nixon was the clear winner. You know why? The visuals, the TV people helped Kennedy prepare himself to look good up on stage, Nixon didn't get such help, and I think he was even sick during the debate which made him look even worse in the visuals. Like it or not, stupid things decide in the American People's minds who won a debate, not the logical things.
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