Why do politicians need money in order to campaign?

[Great_Antibob]

The proposal is to restrict the exposure voters have to a candidate. Right or wrong, we place a great deal of faith on our own impressions of a candidate - tone of speech, physical appearance, gravitas, etc. To a certain extent, we judge a candidate’s honesty this way.

Restricting a candidate’s opportunities to meet the public restricts the public’s ability to make fully informed decisions. A candidate can claim anything on a 30s spot or a written manifesto. It’s only by engaging with other people, via speeches, debates, etc. that we get the full flavor of personality.

So, it seems like the proposal is to gut a key element of democracy to save some money, i.e. save democracy by killing democracy.

For what it’s worth, this proposal sounds something like presidential campaigns 200 years ago. Candidates did not go out for themselves but had representatives travel to promote the party/candidate. It doesn’t really save money. Money = ways to advertise = more votes. You’d end up over-regulating and simply spending more money in the process of trying to spend less money.

[gonzomax]

Political campaigns should be restricted to public money only. That would make an even fireld and eliminate much of the influence of the rich.

[VinylTurnip]

@Great_Antibob

The proposal is to restrict the exposure voters have to a candidate. Right or wrong, we place a great deal of faith on our own impressions of a candidate - tone of speech, physical appearance, gravitas, etc. To a certain extent, we judge a candidate’s honesty this way.

And conversely, how am I going to know who not to vote for if I can’t see incessantly repeated commercials showing an unflattering extreme close-up of the candidate’s opponent (slow zoom in on a sinister negative image) along with ominous background music and a voiceover telling me how he voted in favor of welfare handouts for flag-burning Muslim pedophiles?

[Great_Antibob]

@VinylTurnip

And conversely, how am I going to know who not to vote for if I can’t see incessantly repeated …

Sure, there’s less than noble campaign advertising out there. But I’d rather have a freer flow of information, even if it means getting a bunch of junk. I can’t see how restricting a candidate’s access to the public leads to a healthier democracy.

I’m also against the KKK, puppy killers, and Nazis (especially Illinois Nazis). And I’m also against restricting their ability to advertise to the public. It’s applying a hammer to a job for a wrench. Those organizations should be dealt with through societal pressure, rather than force of law. Damaging democracy (even for a good cause) is not the proper solution.

[gonzomax]

Allowing corporations and the wealthy to purchase advertising is not the free flow of info. It is a specific slant presented by those who can afford it. It does not bring democracy but oligarchy and corporate power.
What would be better than an even playing field for all candidates?

[Marley23]

@gonzomax

What would be better than an even playing field for all candidates?

How about an even playing field that also respects the Constitution?

[njtt]

@John_Mace

Think of the hit to the economy. Doesn’t campaigning account for about 25% of GDP in the US?

But yeah, there is the minor problem of the First Amendment, which is nigh on absolute when it comes to political speech.

So let’s rewrite the first amendment. (Gasp! Horror!) Surely there is some way it could be reworded so that unpopular political speech is still protected, but so that the worst undesirable consequences that it gives rise to (such as the one the OP is trying to address) are avoided. It might not be so pithy, but it might work, and it might actually be more in the spirit of want the founders intended than the situation we have now.

While the cost of campaigning remains so high (something that 18th century gentlemen could not have anticipated), there is really no way American politics can avoid being deeply and systemically corrupt.

@Marley23

How about an even playing field that also respects the Constitution?

Good governance is a lot more important than allegiance to an old bit of paper.

[Marley23]

@njtt

Good governance is a lot more important than allegiance to an old bit of paper.

:rolleyes: If you seriously think Congress and the U.S. public can be convinced to vote for a new Constitutional amendment that rewrites the First Amendment, then go to it and good luck. On the off chance you recognize that that’s absolutely impossible, you’d be better off thinking of a way to regulate elections that does not violate the First Amendment. What the OP is discussing plainly does so. An even playing field for candidates is a good idea, but gonzomax asked what would be better and I gave a truthful answer: an even playing field that allows people to exercise their Constitutional rights, that gives the electorate more information rather than less, and one that is based on laws consistent with the Constitution.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@gonzomax

Allowing corporations and the wealthy to purchase advertising is not the free flow of info.

Are you speaking here of truthful advertising, or false advertising?

[BrainGlutton]

Short answer: Because some parties who, at present, can influence elections and therefore public policy with their money don’t want to give that up. That is why organizations like the Center for Competitive Politics exist (compare the Center for Responsive Politics; Colbert interviewed a leader of each last week).

[TriPolar]

They don’t need much money to campaign. They need a lot of money to win, because people tend to vote for or against someone they’ve heard of.

You also assume the purpose of the money is for campaigning. Much of it is, but a lot of it is flat out bribery.

[Nica]

@Ravenman

I don’t understand what you’re talking about in terms of “saving the taxpayers money.” Taxpayers don’t pay campaign costs, except if a presidential candidate accepts public financing which is based on voluntary contributions from taxpayers.

The major costs of campaign involve office space, travel, advertising, swag like t-shirts and yard signs, maybe some money for polls depending on the office being sought, fundraising (takes money to make money), and some staff to do things like schedule appearances, organize volunteers, and answer questions from the press.

Do you really want a political system where you are expected to vote for someone having never heard them give a speech on their positions or meet with anyone to hear their concerns?

Goodness. All I was proposing is that all the hollywooding isn’t even necessary if a voter can have all the info they need right in front of them at one time. As for taxpayers money, I was referring to taxpayer donations to campaigns.

[Nica]

@TriPolar

They don’t need much money to campaign. They need a lot of money to win, because people tend to vote for or against someone they’ve heard of.

You also assume the purpose of the money is for campaigning. Much of it is, but a lot of it is flat out bribery.

That’s what I was inferring, actually. Lobbyists… hollywooding… as I put it.

[TriPolar]

@Nica

Goodness. All I was proposing is that all the hollywooding isn’t even necessary if a voter can have all the info they need right in front of them at one time. As for taxpayers money, I was referring to taxpayer donations to campaigns.

What info could you possibly obtain to determine how to vote? You are always gambling that the person you vote for will do their job in a manner you approve of. Nothing they do or say will guarantee that. In addition, most people don’t carefully consider any information available to them at all. They vote for a party, or a nice looking candidate, or someone they think they’d like to have a beer with, or someone who promises something appealling, or against those people.

[BrainGlutton]

First we need a SCOTUS that will reverse Buckley v. Valeo.

From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 256-259 (from before the McCain-Feingold Bill, but I don’t think the picture has changed all that much since it passed):

Campaign financing is by far the most important mechanism for overclass influence in government. The real two-party system in the United States consists of the party of voters and the tiny but influential party of donors. The donor party in the United States is made up of an extraordinarily small number of citizens. In 1988, according to one study, only 10.2 percent of the American public made a contribution to a candidate, party, or partisan group. . . . The group of large political donors is a still more exclusive club. According to a study by Citizen Action, in the 1989-90 election cycle only 179,677 individual donors gave contributions greater than $200 to a federal candidate, political action committee (PAC), or party: “Thirty-four percent of the money spent by federal candidates was directly contributed by no more than one-tenth of one percent of the voting age population.” One may reasonably doubt that this one tenth of one percent is representative of the electorate or the population at large.

<snip>

Special interests buy favors from congressmen and presidents through political action committees (PACs), devices by which groups like corporations, professional associations, trade unions, investment banking groups – can pool their money and give $10,000 per election to each House and Senate candidate. Today there are more than 4,000 Political Action Committees (PACs) of various kinds registered with the Federal Election Commission; in 1974, when they were sanctioned by law, there were only 500. PAC money is driving campaign costs to new heights. In 1992, the average Senate incumbent spent more than $3.6 million for re-election; that is the equivalent of raising $12,000 a week in a single six-year term. Members of Congress, by comparison, spend only an average of $557,403 to be re-elected – a “mere” $5,000 a week for a two-year term. The average cost of a House campaign has risen to this level from $140,000 in 1980 – and $52,000 in 1974.

The chief beneficiaries of rising campaign costs and PAC contributions have been incumbents. In 1972, 52 cents of the average PAC dollar went to incumbents, compared to 25 cents to challengers (the rest went to candidates for open seats); in the 1988 House elections, incumbents received 84.4 cents of each PAC dollar and challengers only 8.6 cents. It makes more sense for lobbies to buy access to established members of Congress and senators – particularly those with important leadership positions – than to fund challengers, who, if elected, would have no seniority and little influence. . . . Former Senator Barry Goldwater has lamented, “The Founding Fathers would frown in their graves if they saw us rationing candidacies sheerly on the basis of money: who has – or can raise – the millions necessary to run for office.”

Democrats, when they were members of the majority party, received more PAC money than Republicans, though both parties are saturated with it. Contrary to conservative claims that liberal lobby groups dominate Congress, PAC funds come overwhelmingly from business: in 1990, 65 percent of PAC contributions came from business PACs, compared to 24 percent from labor and only 11 percent from ideological groups (including conservative as well as liberal pressure groups). “At one point,” John Judis has pointed out, “the American Petroleum Institute employed more lobbyists in Washington than the entire labor movement.”

They don’t come much more libertarian than Goldwater, and even he was appalled at this state of affairs.

From the same book, pp. 311-313:

Today’s U.S. government is democratic in form but plutocratic in substance. . . . In a misguided 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court held that Congress could not limit spending by rich Americans promoting their own candidacies. This decision was to the equalization of voting power what Dred Scott was to abolitionism. In The Yale Law Review, Jamin Raskin and John Boniface have argued that political candidates in the United States must win a “wealth primary.” Candidates without enormous amounts of money, either from their own fortunes or from rich individuals and special interest groups, cannot hope to win the party primaries – much less general elections. Indeed, the Buckley decision is one reason why more than half the members of the Senate today are millionaires. . . .

It is time to build a wall of separation between check and state. Curing the disease of plutocratic politics requires a correct diagnosis of its cause: the costs of political advertising. The basic problem is that special interests buy access and favors by donating the money needed for expensive political advertising in the media. Elaborate schemes governing the flow of money do nothing to address the central problem: paid political advertising. Instead of devising unworkable limits on campaign financing that leave the basic system intact, we should cut the Gordian knot of campaign corruption by simply outlawing paid political advertising on behalf of any candidate for public office. The replacement of political advertising by free informational public service notices in the electronic and print media would level the playing field of politics and kill off an entire parasitic industry of media consultants and spin doctors.

An outright ban on paid political advertising and the imposition of free time requirements on the media are radical measures, but nothing less is necessary if we are to prevent our government from continuing to be sold to the highest bidders. The argument against strict public regulation of money in politics is based on a false analogy between free spending and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The analogy is false, because limits on campaign finance do not address the content of speech – only its volume, as it were. It is not an infringement on free speech to say that, in a large public auditorium, Douglas will not be allowed to use a microphone unless Lincoln can as well.*

*A much more compelling analogy would be between the electoral process and the judicial system, with the electorate playing the role of the jury. In our system of trial by jury, there are elaborate rules governing the presentation of evidence to the jury by plaintiff and defendant (the “candidates”). If our judicial system were organized the way our judicial system is, then rich candidates would be allowed to buy time before the jury. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, in one Senate election, outspent his opponent by 300 to 1; the equivalent, in the judicial system, would be allowing a rich defendant to buy, say, six months to present his side of the case, while the poor plaintiff might be able to purchase only twenty minutes for his side.

[Thudlow_Boink]

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I ran for office without spending any money campaigning. I’d announce my candidacy; I’d answer any questions or grant any interviews or participate in any debates that anyone invited me to. I might even set up a website, or a facebook profile or some such. I just wouldn’t spend any significant money or time hyping myself.

I’m not going to try the experiment, because I don’t want to be elected to anything. Besides, I suspect that some of the people who come in fifth in local elections tried this kind of approach.

[Nica]

@Thudlow_Boink

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I ran for office without spending any money campaigning. I’d announce my candidacy; I’d answer any questions or grant any interviews or participate in any debates that anyone invited me to. I might even set up a website, or a facebook profile or some such. I just wouldn’t spend any significant money or time hyping myself.

I’m not going to try the experiment, because I don’t want to be elected to anything. Besides, I suspect that some of the people who come in fifth in local elections tried this kind of approach.

But what if it’s on an open access federally hosted website? All the info you would need. They could grant interviews, hold q&a. Do you really think it’s necessary to travel the country by bus or plane and buy tv ads if all of the information is openly available?

[Nica]

@DianaG

Not less information, just less air time. The problem is that most people make up their minds based on 30 second commercials that offer very little information indeed. If those commercials ceased to exist, people might seek out better information.

Or not, because most people are lazy and stupid. But one can hope.

I agree, Diana. This is where smear campaigns begin. I was proposing a mature, non-grandstanding, non-bribery inciting approach. A central source for information. I do enjoy tossing the idea around.

[Ravenman]

I assume that “Hollywooding” and “grand standing” is defined as anything that you don’t like. Do you have a more objective definition of what those terms mean?

For example, is holding a town hall meeting acceptable to you or not? What about visiting a business or union leaders? Standing next to a subway station and shaking hands – is that okay?

[Nica]

@Ravenman

I assume that “Hollywooding” and “grand standing” is defined as anything that you don’t like. Do you have a more objective definition of what those terms mean?

For example, is holding a town hall meeting acceptable to you or not? What about visiting a business or union leaders? Standing next to a subway station and shaking hands – is that okay?

I was referring to slam campaigns and bribery. I constantly read how people are tired of politicians lining their pockets or awed at the overwhelming amount of money that is raised to compete in this enormous contest … the venues, the balls, the dinners… when all we need are the facts. That’s all I am stating.