Jon Stewart on Never Ending Elections with Doris Kearns Goodwin and Eugene Daniels (Teaser)

[Music] we are such a convoluted mess when it comes to our election systems whether it's through the financial Shenanigans of super pcts and all the loopholes that exist and corporations are people and money is free speech and the 14 or 15 billion dollars that we're going to spend on uh this election and we don't know where the dark money is from so from the financing to the rules to the ubiquity to the fact that it doesn't ever end which means we are always at each other's throats and never have time for makeup electoral sex in the country like we're just fighting at all times like we are a mess but you know what John yes ma'am we created these problems we can solve these problems we can change things we can have a political revolution we can make it so that money is not in politics we can do these things I mean why are the best people not running for public office now because they know they're going to have to spend their time raising money tons and tons of money they know their private lives are going to be exposed they don't think that they're going to be able to get very much done because the two parties at log ahads we created these problems by the system we created we can change that system you know they talked about we can't make a change in our candidate even given this most extreme and Urgent new information that we've received during a debate because we don't have enough time meanwhile France time did their they did two elections in six weeks England did it in eight weeks and and those those systems can be applied here we have an electoral industrial complex that needs to be broken up it is monopolistic and and FTC needs to get involved Eugene what say you sir I think you're right as someone who's in DC a lot and I'm not going to prognosticate but I have not seen enough of the excitement from you and Doris about these kinds of things big enough to see changes actually happen I can be pretty cynical on some of the political things because you know people will say one thing behind closed doors I'm pointing to my door you can't see it um one thing behind closed doors and then a completely different thing like to your face and you know that the thing both of those things are happen so our political incentive structure is off first of all and so people don't always speak the things that they feel many of them do want these kinds of changes many of them want money money out of politics there are a lot of Republicans who are speaking this language right now which is really interesting it used to be more of a democratic U message and so there's a world in which they do come together that world has to and and this could be one of those moments where maybe the parties are looking around depending on what happens in November well the parties won't do it because anybody who thinks they'll lose advantage in the same way that DC will never become a state because in the way that our system works you can't the Ians will never go for a democratic area getting a senator or getting you know they're they're just never going to go for that type of sharing but I think solving the time problem solves the money problem and it helps to solve the hatred in the country right like that's right you know like the amount of attacks that we all receive come from this like the length of time at which we're hitting each other there's attack ads everyone's saying this person's the worst person that's ever lived exactly there's a lot of things that if we fix this one thing could work better in this country I think the country might be better off for it let us three pledge let's pledge that we're going to argue about this I mean just think of how much better our lives would be if we only had to focus on these presidential elections you know over a six week period or a 10- we period and we didn't have to think about them day after day after day we just have to believe that we can do it I mean we've made bigger changes in our lives and our political lives over time you know we we ended segregation we allowed more people to vote that did vote women couldn't vote for so long and black people couldn't vote for so long we've made those changes we have to change the system as it is now you've gotten me really riled up right now I better live for another 50 years so I can be part of this I want to be part of it I'm so riled up and I know that you and Eugene are riled up and we can do this and we have the technology this is a road and the media cycle that like if in years ago like if if this was the the 60s or even if it was the 1800s and people had to get on their hor some buggy and go around and introduce themselves to all the Americans that would be much more difficult these people can introduce themselves at the drop of a hat there you could have the amount of ads the amount of Twitter the amount of information we can get about these people in a short amount of time actually wouldn't be difficult two to three months is almost too long people will already be sick of a you'll already be in that cycle of I'm tired of this person I want the next person the idea that this vetting process is somehow getting us closer to more competent and better leadership is nonsense and insane and we have created uh an electoral campaign system that does the opposite of what it is intended to do which is we've created a system so burdensome so onerous so expensive so hate-filled that all it does is drag the worst of us to the highest positions in leadership and I say it changes now and I'm proud to announce my co-chairs of Eugene Daniels and Doris K Goodwin and we're going to make this happen and I didn't I didn't even curse once not one during that entire speech very good very good