Democracy in USA, circa 2006 (#231, Topic P)

With mid-term election in USA rapidly upon us, the airwaves are full of election-related programs. At the Delaware beach earlier this week, C-SPAN, the public-service TV channel, beamed a live debate between two congressional candidates vying for a seat in Pennsylvania. The program opened with the moderator asking the incumbent, a Republican, about his personal residence. It seemed that he and his family live in a spacious 6-bedroom house in a prestigeous neighborhood, but, for the record, he is said to live in a modest 3-bedroom house in a so-so neighborhood. This caught the incumbent by surprise -- I was equally surprised at first, but I soon realized that the question dealt with an important issue: a candidate's honesty and integrity. The incumbent realized as much; unable to offer a cogent answer, he began by saying that, as a person, his first duty is to his family -- no quarrel there, though it is beside the point. Realizing as such, the incumbent, without missing a beat, began to accuse his challenger about a point the latter supposedly made (presumably on an earlier debate) but utterly irrelevant to the question posed by the moderator in this telecast. And the program went downhill from there -- irrelevant, evasive, finger pointing, and barely civil. Any debate on "Big Decisions of 2006" types of questions(#229)? They certainly escaped me. With 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats up for election/re-election in November 2006, there are probably thousands of such debates going on every day, with considerable effort and at substantial expenses. Of course, the electorate needs to be educated. When one adds other contests at the state or county level, the number of such debates would probably be in the millions. At the beach, I read that the two candidates for Delaware's attorney general position had amassed "war chests" exceeding $1 million! Why is the attorney general position elected rather than appointed (as at the Federal level)? I don't know; all I know is that Delaware is one of the smallest states in the Union. How much money is needed to mount all contests at all levels in all states in the Union? Billions? Tens of billions? I shudder to think. But, of course, a rich country such as USA has to set an example on how democracy is to be run.