Speech I gave in school partially about Mike Gravel

How many here know who Hillary Clinton is? [pause]

How many here know who Barack Obama is? [pause]

Now, how many of you know who Mike Gravel is? [pause]

Why is this?  Why do so many of you know who the first two are, but lack the least bit of knowledge about the latter?  They’re all running for president, they’re all Democrats, yet somehow only a small percentage of the electorate even recognizes Gravel’s name.

Every child in America is told that they can become president if the only will it, but this isn’t the case for Mike Gravel.  It is patently obvious that Gravel has not been given a fair chance.  If most voters don’t even know who the man is, how can he be expected to compete with two famous frontrunners?

How could this happen?  The American democratic process, especially presidential elections, are not democratic at all.  They deny the will of the people, and ensure that government is in no way “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

The minute a campaign starts, it starts to become perverted.  To run their campaign, a candidate needs money.  Many times, the source of that money is a corporation that places profit above the interests of Americans like you and me.  If a corporation helps fund a candidate’s run for office wouldn’t they expect something in return once they’re elected?  If this favor is in conflict with the public interest or the candidate’s campaign promises, then fulfilling it corrupts the politician.

Even the most seemingly innocent candidates have to raise money in order to compete.  Take, for example, Barack Obama.  He’s portrayed as a new face in politics, a hopeful leader who wants to work for change.  If he is elected, we are told, everyone will hold hands and the sky will become clearer.  However, he cannot be expected to clean the sky when the energy industry has paid for $600,000 of his run for the presidency.  And he cannot be expected to enact laws that help the environment when he was already voted to fund technology that puts dirty coal into our cars’ engines.  This same coal happens to be a special interest in his home state of Illinois, and a favorite of energy corporations like Exelon.  And Exelon footed the bill for over $200,000 of Mr. Obama’s campaign.

However, the democratic process is not only corrupt behind the scenes.  There are blatant violations of citizens’ right to a fair election every minute of every day.  The very people reporting on the presidential election, who tell us what’s going on in our world, are guilty of disenfranchising the voting public.

There are five corporations – AOL Time Warner, General Electric, Vivendi Universal, News Corp, and Disney – that control almost every entity within the US media.  These companies have say over what goes on the air and what doesn’t.  These monoliths of the press do not want to put information out that would hurt them – and why would they?  They are businesses; they must protect their profit.  This quest for profit, however, harms the American public.  Any people or ideas that could lower earnings are either ignored or denounced as crazy, even if they could improve our world.

            By telling the public what is acceptable and what is not, these companies have the power to shape the opinions of our society to their advantage.  They profess that certain ideas are common knowledge, and even if they aren’t, suddenly everyone will think that they are.  For example, we are told all the time by the media that America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, even though almost 40 million people live in poverty here.  How does this deception serve the media?  By keeping facts like these quiet they keep people from getting upset and demanding a shift away from the status quo.  These conglomerates that own the media don’t want the status quo changed, because they thrive in the current political climate.

            Perhaps Noam Chomsky, the media expert, said it best when he stated that “the smart way to keep people passive… is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow lively debate within that spectrum… That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced.”

            Surely, the actual process of voting negates all of this injustice.  [pause]  Wrong.  The system for electing a president is a mess.  In caucuses, nominees are decided by an archaic practice of voters trying to persuade each other with meaningless rhetoric.  In primaries, only a small percentage of eligible voters participate, and even these voters are marginalized by untrustworthy voting machines.

            The national election process is even more pathetic.  A little-known fact is that barely anyone in the country actually votes for a presidential candidate.  Most Americans vote for electors who represent their opinion in the Electoral College, which is a group of these representatives who decide presidential elections.  These electors cast their vote for the president, which is based on who their constituency voted for.  But sometimes there is a mishap with this confusing system, or someone takes advantage of it.  The freshest memory of this is when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George Bush won the electoral vote.  This means that a majority of America wanted Gore to be president, but Bush won anyway, because of a flawed system.

            The system which a large part of our democracy is based on, is broken.  That can be an overwhelming problem.  However, everything that is broken can be fixed.  One proposed solution to the problem of campaign financing is to have the government pay for every presidential candidate’s run for office.  In the short term, there are currently limits being put on how much money can come from a single donor and how much money individual interests can contribute.  With regards to the media, there are no simple solutions.  The monopolies of the press must be broken up, but other than that it comes down to journalists performing their Constitutional duty of challenging those in power. 

The most hope lies within the solutions to the problem that is our broken electoral process.  To fix the enigmatic nomination system, the most practical solution calls for voters to rank the candidates, and each candidate gets a certain amount of points based on how they’re ranked.  The candidate with the most points overall wins.  There is also a growing movement to replace the Electoral College with a simple popular vote. 

But one answer to these various problems is both the most radical and the most promising.  Senator Mike Gravel, who we already know is running for president, calls his idea the National Initiative.  This plan would even fix the exact problems that are keeping Gravel from succeeding in his bid for office.  It would allow citizens to directly propose legislations, vote on it, and pass bills into laws.  The citizenry would act as an additional check in balance in our government.  However, some people say that the public is not responsible or informed enough to help run the country.  But to those of you who say that, ask yourself this:  Who do you trust more to control the government – corrupt, money-grabbing politicians, or everyday citizens who feel the effects of their legislation?

These are obviously huge problems.  And there’s obviously nothing that one person, especially an insignificant teenager could do to fix them, right?  No.  There are millions of ways for you, me, and everyone else in this class to help fix these problems.  The solutions will not be implemented overnight, and they will not even be considered without enormous support from the people.  So get out there, and voice your opinion.  Protest.  Get angry.  Stand up for your rights.  Tell everyone you know and some people you don’t know what you think.  Otherwise, this problem – and any other problems in society – will never get fixed.