Newt Gingrich Blasts The Long, Winding Road To The White House
And he’s right too, particularly on these points:
“These aren’t debates,” the former Georgia congressman said. “This is a cross between [TV shows] ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘Who’s Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.’”
“What’s the job of the candidate in this world?” asked Gingrich. “The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.”
What’s particularly frustrating is that the one serious candidate who has decided not to jump into the race as early as the rest of the candidates (Fred Thompson) has been criticized for doing so.
Do we really need these candidates to campaign for well over a year? I don’t think so.
Most of this is pushed on us by the media. Presidential race coverage is pretty lucrative for them, and it gives the talking heads endless topics to gnosh on. So every year the candidates get pressured more and more by journalists to begin their campaigns, thus every year we citizens are exposed to the silly spectacle of political campaigns started earlier than they needed to be.
