The Price of Politics

Barack Obama spent $730 million getting to the White House in 2008, which was twice as much as George W. Bush spent 4 years earlier and more than 260 times what Abraham Lincoln spent in his first election (as measured in 2011 dollars). Looking at the total costs of presidential elections over the past 150 years, it would seem that the White House is the ultimate recession-proof commodity. Because when one looks at the increase in campaign costs (measured in real dollars) they significantly outpaced the price of gold’s rise over the 20th century. Every four years Americans elect a president, and every four years, campaign-finance experts predict that the next election will be the most expensive election in history. The 2016 presidential campaign is no exception. According to CBS News Americans who are running for federal elective offices spent more than ever, almost $7 billion in that pursuit. That’s more than what consumers spend on cereal, $6 billion. According to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics just under half of that, $2.65 billion was spent on the presidential race, which is slightly less than the $2.76 billion that was spent in 2012. Despite greatly outraising the real estate mogul and billionaire Trump by almost $400 million, Clinton could not secure enough votes to win the electoral vote. So why does it cost so much to campaign for election in the United States? Well for one a bigger country equals  bigger money. America is the largest democracy in the world with a population over 300 million and trying to reach that population costs a lot. As Republican strategist Ron Bonjean points out, “its going to cost a lot of money to express yourself and get your message out, get the vote out, get people to support you and put in campaign infrastructure.” In order for a candidate to reach all 50 states during an election cycle, a treasure trove of money is needed to cover that much ground. Not only is America a large country but you also have to look at the length of its campaigns compared to many other countries. In Britain for instance their campaign for prime minister can last as little as 1 month compared to the 10 months the US takes. Closer to home Canada and Mexico spend about three month’s campaign. Keith Boykin, a Democratic strategist and former staffer on Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, said “the length of the U.S. election cycle dictates that candidates must pile up funds to survive the long haul. “ While nothing can be done about the size of the U.S. the amount of time given to campaigning could definitely be shortened. I would guess that not only would it save millions of dollars but it would also save some sanity. One big cost is advertising and television advertising is by far the most expensive item in a campaign’s budget. Air time in major markets in key swing states can cost a campaign millions of dollars. Again this is where Clinton vastly out spent Trump especially in the closing weeks of the election. Estimates show team Clinton spent 50 times as much as Team Trump on television ads in Florida in the final weeks of the election. In Florida, Clinton spent $36.6 million, versus just under $700,000 for Trump. The differences continue in Ohio, $20.9 million versus $1.8 million, Pennsylvania $18.8 million versus $1.5 million and North Carolina $14.3 million versus $1.3 million. If there is one thing that the 2016 presidential election has taught us it is that money is not always the major determining fact when it comes to wining. The richest candidate doesn’t always win, money may allow you to have the loudest voice but it doesn’t guarantee you the vote. This brings me to an interesting question, what could we do with all the money that was spent on presidential elections? I wonder how many homeless people could one feed with 2.5 Billion Dollars. In 2016, over half a million people in the U.S. were considered homeless. According to the national survey done every January 564,708 people were living on the streets, in cars, in homeless shelters, or in subsidized transitional housing. Of that number, 206,286 were people in families, 358,422 were individuals, and a quarter of the entire group were children. 83,170 individuals, or 15% of the homeless population, are considered “chronically homeless.” Chronic homelessness is defined as an individual who has a disability and has experienced homelessness for a year or longer, or an individual who has a disability and has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years (must be a cumulative of 12 months). Families with at least one adult member who meets that description are also considered chronically homeless. 47,725, or about 8% of the homeless population, are veterans. Well let’s say it costs $20 to feed one person in a 24 hour day, $5.00 for breakfast, $7.00 for lunch, and $8.00 dinner. That means you could feed 1.25 million people for one day or just over 400,000 people for a year. We could almost feed our homeless population for a year on what we spend to elect a president. What is even more staggering is that the amount of money we spend every four years on a presidential campaign could feed the 50,000 homeless vets for 8 years.  What about the 140,000 homeless children, who over 50% are younger than six years old. We could almost feed them for all four years the president was in office just on the money spent campaign in a year.  What price are we willing to pay to promote politics, and what are they producing? Many of the candidates claim to care about social issues yet they spend more on getting into power than they do on poverty. One of the faulty beliefs today is that our country rises and falls on who is leading, but I believe we give politics way too much power. The truth is we need to stop leaning on law and start leaning on love. Human goodness is a far greater power than government. What if we stopped funding political leaders every four years and started funding the future? Our political system has conned us into believing that government is the best agent for positive people change. But people don’t need a handout they need a hand up and that requires people with real love, caring and compassion, not programs. Politicians may provide political promises but people need real hands not empty hope. What if We The People put politics aside and came together based on our common heart and humanity. So let me ask you what would happen if we stopped leaning on the law and started leaning on love to change our country?

One of the main reasons given for the historic political shift in American is racism. The media has constantly portrayed the Trump camp as a bunch of racist bigots. Just as CNN’s Van Jones stated on election night: “We’ve talked about everything but race tonight,” he said. “This was a white-lash against a changing country. It was a white-lash against a black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.” Today one of the common reasons given for many of the problems in black communities is racism. Recently we have seen many professional athletes refusing to stand during the singing of the national anthem in an attempt to bring attention to the problem of social inequality in our country. So here is my question, “Are people more racist in America today than they were in the 60’s?” While I believe that racism is still a problem in America I personally don’t believe that we are more racist today than we were then. That was a disgustingly dark time in our countries history when communities, collages, even busses and drinking fountains were divided. So here is my second question, if we are not as racist as we were then why are things worse in black communities today than they were then? According to a report released by the Urban Institute, the state of the African-American family is worse today than it was in the 1960’s. Unemployment for African-American men remains more than twice as high as among white men. For white men in 1954, unemployment was zero. For African-American men in 1954, it was about 4 percent. By 2010 it was 16.7 percent for African-American men and 7.7 percent for white men. In 1954, 79 percent of African-American men were employed, but by 2011 that had decreased to 57 percent. If racism was worse then than it is now and yet social issues are worse today then one would have to assume that racism is not the main disease destroying them. I’m not denying that racism isn’t alive or that it isn’t a problem I’m saying that based on the facts it doesn’t appear to be what’s driving the poverty and prison rates. So what is? Could it be a parental problem? Since the 1960’s there has been a steady decline in the family. Of the 27 industrialized countries studied in 2009 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries. In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household. So let’s talk about single family homes and poverty. Today two-parent black families are rarely poor, statistics show that among black families where both the husband and wife work full-time, the current poverty rate is just 2 percent. Much of the poverty is found in single parent families. Children in single-parent households are not only raised with economic hardship but they also face social and psychological disadvantages. Statistics show that they are four times as likely as children from two parent families to be abused or neglected. They are much likelier to have trouble academically, being twice as likely to drop out of school. They are three times more likely to have behavioral problems, more apt to experience emotional disorders. They are two-and-a-half times likelier to be sexually active as teens and almost twice as likely to conceive children out-of-wedlock when they are teens or young adults. They are also three times more likely to be on welfare when they reach adulthood. Facts also teach us that growing up without a father is a far better forecaster of a boy’s future criminality than either race or poverty. Regardless of race, 70 percent of all young people in state reform institutions were raised in fatherless homes, as were 60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates. As Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector has noted, “Illegitimacy is a major factor in America’s crime problem. Lack of married parents, rather than race or poverty, is the principal factor in the crime rate.” Because the black illegitimacy rate is so high, these pathologies plague blacks more than they affect any other demographic. Black economist and professor Walter E. Williams states “Even if white people were to become morally rejuvenated tomorrow,”, “it would do nothing for the problems plaguing a large segment of the black community. Illegitimacy, family breakdown, crime, and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they are not civil rights problems.” Yet this runs contrary to the picture that the media has been painting as they keep spoon feeding society the lie that poverty problems are just a by-products of racism. That view, through decades of constant repetition, has won the minds of many Americans. “Instead of admitting that racism has declined,” observes Shelby Steele, “we [blacks] argue all the harder that it is still alive and more insidious than ever. We hold race up to shield us from what we do not want to see in ourselves.” The astronomical illegitimacy rate in black communities is a relatively recent phenomenon. Statistics show us that as late as 1950 black women nationwide were more likely to be married than white women, and only 9 percent of black families with children were headed by a single parent. In the 1950s, black children had a 52 percent chance of living with both their biological parents until age seventeen, but by the 1980s those odds had dwindled to a mere 6 percent. In 1959, only 2 percent of black children were reared in households in which the mother never married while today that figure is fast approaching 60 percent. In their landmark book America in Black and White, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom make this profoundly important observation: “In the past three decades the proportion of intact married-couple families has declined precipitously even though the fraction of black women aged fifteen to forty-four who were divorced, separated, or widowed also went down.… It is thus not divorce but the failure to marry that has led to such a momentous change in black family patterns. The marriage rate for African Americans has plummeted in the past third of a century. In 1960 … black women were only a shade less likely to marry than white women…. Today a clear majority of African American women aged fifteen to forty-five have never been married, as compared with just a third of their white counterparts…. Many fewer black women are marrying, and yet they continue to have children—which was not the case in an earlier era.” Am I suggesting that racism is not a problem or that I am somehow ignorant or naïve, no in fact I can attest first hand that racism is alive all over the world. When a group of 30 men from our church went to New Orleans to rebuild after hurricane Katrina in 2005, many of the black families I helped had anger and even hatred for Hispanic people. Rap music regularly repeats racist remarks. I was born and raised in Africa and I repeatedly heard and watched different tribes not only disrespect but full out hate each other, black on black. Later living in the Middle East I watched Arabs treat Indian families as second class citizens, at the time there were more Indian workers than Arabs living in the country.  While completing my education in England I watched racism alive and well between white people just because they were from different European countries. Racism is not an American problem it’s a human problem. Look hate is a heart issue something the great Martin Luther King understood.  You see we have a sin issue not a skin issue and that is why Jesus died for the world not just for whites. What if Jesus had died only for Jews? Speaking of Jews have you ever wondered why there are so few I mean after thousands of years there are only 1.5 million Jews. It’s because people like Hitler hated and killed them by the millions and today they are still hated and bombed on a daily basis. While racism is a problem that needs to be faced head on it does not appear to be the driving force behind the poverty problem, parenting does. I would suggest that our greatest problem is not a racial one but a relational one. What’s driving the bus is not bigotry and fear but fatherlessness.  What if we are fighting the wrong fight, what if the fight isn’t black and white but family failure? Look a wall is only as strong as its individual bricks and if many of the bricks are missing what is going to hold the wall up? I wonder if the reason why progressive America has had so little impact on the problem is because their thesis is flawed. What if the answer is parent’s not more political policies, what if the answer to this failure is family, specifically fathers? What if what we need is not more legislation and laws but strong families?