The way to reduce the impact of money in elections is to make elections smaller, i.e. shrink the federal government and go full blown State's Rights. So much money is needed because there are so many people to reach and marketing costs a lot. Fewer people to reach = less money being deployed in any particular election.
I can't agree more with you and wish so much we as a nation would see the wisdom the founding fathers had when they wrote all rights not given to the federal government belong to the states. They were weary of powerful central governments and introduced competition throughout the system to stay the power of wicked men in centralized systems.
Going back to such a system would require incredible tolerance on both "conservative" and "progressive" sides. We would have to accept that within one nation there would be other states regulated in highly different fashions than our own.
