There was probably an unprecedented amount of real interest in and passionate discussion of Campaign '08 throughout the nation. And there's one thing that might be agreed upon by all: an obscene amount of money was spent promoting candidates with messages that were either half-truths or outright lies.

It may be difficult to measure how much harm was done this time to the democratic process, but we have known for years that negative, sensational messages are a powerful influence on many voters, and that those voters get much of their information from television.

How about if we start the Campaign of '09 and ask the new Congress for real election reform? It would fit nicely in the new platform of CHANGE. For a start we could keep it real simple -like the Brits from whom we got our democratic ideals. Just ban all political campaign ads from television.