Here you go. It's rather painful to watch, as you might expect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8
(FYI, I did not make this video)
Until no politician/President can guarantee himself a second term will they ever feel accountable to the public.
Yet the one thing they will count on is the ability to play on voters irrational fears/views of the other guy.
Plus, campaign promises have a tendency toward melting away when facing hard reality. Even if a Green or Libertarian candidate had won (absolutely 0% chance), there's no reason to think they'd have followed through on their promises. They might want to, but so does Obama, presumably. It's just the structure of government that someone in the executive branch isn't going to be willing to use all of their political capital in a battle that weakens their own authority.
In other words, once you give government power, there's essentially no chance that they will relinquish it.
C'mon. Doesn't everything Obama has said on surveillance sound exactly like what Bush would have said? They're the same, they just use different dog whistles.
I have a hard time believing that campaign promises are anything other than lies, told bald-facedly in order to satisfy an image being portrayed by the campaign. It's all an act, just like this NSA speech is likely just an act designed not to change anything. Reality is that they're going to do whatever they want to do.
Why are we voting for second terms, then? Call for single-term presidencies.
Plurality voting systems generally result in two dominant parties.
I hate these cholera-vs-the-plague choices.
I forget the source of that quote.
Did you read Daniel Ellsberg's AMA interview on Reddit the other day?
In it he was actually supportive of those who had voted for Obama based on the principle of the lesser evil, explicitly invoking the Duverger's Law mentioned in a sibling comment.
Either way let's face it, the natural area a third-party split could occur at this point is within the GOP, not the Democrats, so a national concerted effort to vote outside the two-party bloc will do to the Republican candidate what Ross Perot did to Bush Sr., and what Ralph Nader did to Gore.
To fix the "lesser of two evils" problem you have to fix how the voting process itself is done first.
And this is going to be done by voting for the lesser of two evils? Interesting.
But hey, please feel free to do what you want, a real libertarian third party is the progressives' wet dream right now.
No, until they learn that they can't get in at all without being accountable to the public, no politician will feel accountable to the public.
I don't know how to look at a politician pre-election and know that they'll be honest and keep citizens' rights foremost. Certainly not by listening to them, because I've noticed whenever they make sounds their lips are moving, and when their lips are moving they lie.
So it would have to depend in part on their not being able to hide anything. Which would mean something like absolutely fucking open books, on everything, almost up to having a camera in the president's bathroom. Citizens would have to be able to inspect just about anything at all at a moment's notice. 'cause Congress won't.
And if not the absolutes of the previous paragraph, then as close as we can get, and closer all the time.
They lie, they have money and weapons, they have to be watched 24/7. Just like us.
Most of all because as I read the body language, Candidate Obama passionately believed in what he was saying. The words march out proud and true, like soldiers.
President Obama seems barely shadow of the man in the earlier clips. He stumbles over the most important parts of his delivery and seems at one stage to hesitate as he asks himself if he can actually say what he is about to say.
Something is wrong with the man in the more recent clips. Emotionally he seems unwell.
First rule of politics: never make a promise you can't keep. Second rule of politics: never keep a promise you don't have to.
Then every politician I know is a glaring exception to this rule.