Campaign Finance Reform is a flop.

2sense · August 21, 2004, 5:22am

The custom was called “treating”. The seminal work on this era in Virginia electoral history is Charles Sydnor’s 1952 work Gentleman Freeholders ( subsequently published as American Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington’s Virginia ). Sydnor reports that in Washington’s first election his agent ( Washington was away on duty, this being during the French and Indian War ) treated the constituents to 50 gallons of bumbo ( rum punch ), 46 gallons of beer, 28 gallons of rum, 34 gallons of wine, and 2 gallons of cider royal. There were 391 voters which supposedly works out to a mere quart and a half per voter. Of course there were also “un-numbered hangers-on” who weren’t entitled to a vote but shared in the refreshments. What we are talking about is a big-assed picnic style party or a meal and formal ball. Voters couldn’t expect to be given a gallon or 2 home to take home with them. It was seen as a social event, not bribery. A candidate treated his constituents to demonstrate his social standing and generosity and thus his fitness to serve in the House of Burgesses.

Treating was expected by voters in colonial and post-colonial Virginia but I am unaware that it was common in other colonies/states. The custom wasn’t universal because it wasn’t the norm here in Pennsylvania, the only other colony/state whose electoral practices of the day I am somewhat familiar with.

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 3:48pm

Bingo.

I consider CFR to be akin to the War on Drugs: started with the noblest of intentions, but doomed to failure. The cure is far, far worse than the disease.

Let anyone give whatever amount to whoever they want. Make full disclosure the only rule. Our political system will never be a golden ideal, but it can be shorn of loophole-mandated contortions and basic dishonesty CFR legislation essentially requires.

2sense · August 21, 2004, 5:02pm

Good thinking! After all, if the government is too weak to prevent Big Business from raping the nation then they wouldn’t have to spend money trying to elect people who will allow them to rape the nation! :rolleyes:

BrainGlutton · August 21, 2004, 5:55pm

Not in France it isn’t, Dewey. In France the system does exactly what it’s supposed to – minimize the role of money in politics. And there is no apparent respect in which that cure is “worse than the disease.” Why can’t that work here?

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 6:09pm

Because Americans are more deeply offended by the notion of paying for the promulgation of ideas they find politically repugnant.

Freedom of speech includes not being forced to support your political adversaries.

BrainGlutton · August 21, 2004, 8:45pm

But we are already paying for the promulgation of ideas we find politically repugnant – not only at the electoral stage, but in government itself. Your tax dollar pays the salaries of every member of Congress – Republicans, Democrats, and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Are you a Republican? Be advised that every time Ted Kennedy takes the floor of the Senate, he is doing so on your dime. Whether you support the president or not, your tax dollars fund his usage of the Oval Office as a bully pulpit to promulgate his ideas and his party’s. And if you belong to a labor union, your dues probably go to fund the campaign of whichever candidates the union leadership supports, regardless of your own views.

Everyone who is arguing this as a free-speech issue is dancing around the real problem. It’s not the $20 individual contributions that are corrupting the system, it’s the much vaster contributions by established business interests.

From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 256-259:

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 corporation, 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.”

One of the effects of the postpartisan PAC system is to weaken the link between members of Congress and senators and the districts and states they are supposed to represent. Out-of-state money from special interests often flowes into House and Senate elections. This means that many senators are, in effect, at-large representatives of free-spending national business constituencies.

Some argue that special-interest expenditures have no significiant influence on public policy. If all of this money is not buying special favors from congressmen and senators, a great many groups and individuals who are otherwise careful with their resources are acting in a highly irrational manner, year after year.

Now, all of these figures are from 1995 or earlier and might need updating. But I can’t believe the importance of money in American elections has diminished in the past nine years, even after the McCain-Feingold bill.

You can’t get much more libertarian than Barry Goldwater. And even he was horrified at what money has done to American politics!

From 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 plaintiff 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.

2sense · August 21, 2004, 9:04pm

Have you any reason to believe this is true?

Same question. Some of our federal tax dollars do go to fund political campaigns. How does this remove anyone’s right to speak their mind?

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 9:07pm

Spare me; this is too cute by half. My tax dollars don’t go to supporting Ted Kennedy’s continued presence in the Senate. Campaign spending is done with the very direct goal of electing a particular person who supports a particular set of issues to office. Congressional salaries lack that direct connection.

A labor union isn’t government. No one has to belong to a union, strictly speaking. Although I jump to point out that, IIRC, labor unions are supposed to allow individual members to withhold the portion of their dues that goes to campaigns, only taking that portion which funds collective bargaining efforts.

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 9:12pm

You mean besides being an American, living in America my whole life, and knowing a hell of a lot of Americans? I think American cultural values are of a type that balks at supporting your opponents. Can I prove that empirically? No, but that doesn’t make the observation invalid. Otherwise, all of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is invalid, since he didn’t empirically prove any of his observations.

It has the effect of putting words in your mouth. Part of free speech is the right not to speak, just as part of the right to associate is the right to exclude.

BrainGlutton · August 21, 2004, 9:13pm

But I am not talking about campaign spending, I am talking about outlawing campaign spending. I repeat Lind’s solution: “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.”

Surely you must see some appeal in that last bit . . . unless you happen to work in that industry . . .

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 9:21pm

And with it, the outlawing of truly free speech. How free am I if I have to approach some government bureaucrat like Oliver Twist and ask “please sir, may I have some more speech”?

So let’s replace free market systems with government rationing. Gee, that approach has worked so well in other facets of life…

I also take issue with the notion that such a plan would “kill off an entire parasitic industry of media consultants and spin doctors.” No, what you’d get are more FoxNews channels – explicitly partisan media outlets designed to circumvent campaign finance restrictions under the guise of ordinary media coverage.

2sense · August 21, 2004, 9:45pm

Yes, exactly. Have you other than circumstantial evidence?

True. Lacking any other evidence your observations might be true. Or not. I was wondering if you could provide reason to believe you are correct.

Are we some totalitarian state now? Have Americans no right to dissent from the resolutions and actions of their government? Because if not then there’s no reason to assume the individual is speaking in favor of something just because the government is doing so. The American government speaks for America, not for all Americans. We are free to speak for ourselves. I believe there is something in the 1st Amendment about that.

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 21, 2004, 9:54pm

This is a silly argument. We wouldn’t be a totalitarian state if the St. Patrick’s Day parade in NY had been required to allow gay groups to march, either. Neither would we be a totalitarian state if strippers were required to wear more than pasties. The measure of the constitutionality of a given measure is not determined by whether that measure, standing alone, would result in a jackbooted fascist nightmare.

2sense · August 21, 2004, 10:22pm

Perhaps my argument seems silly because you didn’t understand it. That would explain why your reply misses the point. I said nothing about what makes a society totalitarian. I argued that since Americans have the right to dissent there is no reason to equate the speech of the government with the speech of the individual. When the American government funds political campaigns it is saying that America believes those campaigns deserve funding. It isn’t saying that every American believes this. It isn’t putting words into anyone’s mouth. Is that more clear?

BrainGlutton · August 21, 2004, 10:58pm

[QUOTE=Dewey Cheatem Undhow]
So let’s replace free market systems with government rationing. Gee, that approach has worked so well in other facets of life…

[QUOTE]

I keep telling you, Dewey, this particular form of government rationing seems to work very well in France and there’s no obvious reason why it couldn’t work here.

I have no problem with that. Partisan journalists are directly useful to civil society in a way that campaign consultants are not.

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 22, 2004, 5:10am

And you missed my point. Just because you hold on to alternative modes of expression doesn’t mean your rights aren’t violated.

If the Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade had been required to permit gay marchers, it could have expressed Irish pride or even disapproval of homosexuality in other venues. That doesn’t mean that being required to allow a disfavored group into its parade wouldn’t be a violation of their rights.

Except, of course, it is: it is demanding my financial support for the promulgation of ideas I abhor. And that is distasteful in a country dedicated to the paramount importance of the individual.

Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow · August 22, 2004, 5:18am

You keep saying that, but you never get around to describing how or why it works better than the current system.

And in any event, France is irrelevant. My objection is moral. It is wrong to require the citizenry to beg like an orphan for its government-set allotment of free speech. The first amendment’s protections were not meant to be parceled out on a rationing system.

When journalists become explicilty partisan, they are doing exactly the same thing campaign consultants do: spinning the news in misleading ways in order to advance their political agendas. There really is no difference.

And, of course, I take it you’re agreeing with me that Lind’s notion that his reforms would “kill off an entire parasitic industry of media consultants and spin doctors” is idiotic in the extreme for precisely the reason I outlined earlier.

2sense · August 22, 2004, 5:25pm

It would certainly be a restriction of their rights, as requiring them to get a permit is a restriction. Whether it would be a violation is a more complex question. I’m not surprised I missed your point here since I don’t see that it has anything to do with the discussion at hand.

Yes we revere the individual but not to the extent that we give up our ability to act as a group. If we took the view you suggest here it would remove that ability. There is never unanimity behind any policy. Every American governmental action or resolution promulgates ideas that some Americans abhor. It’s inevitable so it makes little sense to take the view you have… unless you are becoming an anarchist.

BrainGlutton · August 23, 2004, 4:03pm

clairobscur already explained how the French campaign-financing system works. See above. And she does not say it does not do what it’s supposed to do – minimize the role of money in elections – and I’m sure that if that were the case she would have made a point of saying so. I keep hoping clair will join in this thread and provide more details. I can find nothing about the details of campaign financing in France in the Wikipedia or Encarta – maybe some Euro Dopers can help us out here? Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from an article by Steven Hill – from 1995, so the figures would need updating – :

Public debate about campaign finance reform has proceeded in deep ignorance of how other democracies confront the issue. Yet a comparative approach sheds new light on potential solutions. A survey of rules and practices of the 20 democracies of Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Israel, Australia and New Zealand reveals the following approaches: 1) outright restrictions on the amount of campaign spending for legislative races; 2) restrictions on the amount of donations; 3) public financing of elections; an d 4) free media access to candidates and parties, coupled with a prohibition on paid political advertisements. Some countries combine several of these, a few use all four. The United States stands alone in being the only country to utilize only one of t hese practices for legislative elections, namely restrictions on the amount of donations.

For instance, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Great Britain place firm limits on candidates’ campaign spending. The ceiling for legislative candidates ranges from $6200 in New Zealand, $15,000 in Great Britain, $22,000 in Canada, to $75,000 in France. Belgium, Spain and Israel restrict the amount of “soft money” campaign spending by parties. In the U.S. there are no such limits, and costs for legislative races often exceed a half a million dollars.

I did start a GQ thread last year: “How does campaign financing work in countries other than the U.S.?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=223440 – and contributors told us things about the systems in France, Germany, Britain, and Australia.

BrainGlutton · August 23, 2004, 4:06pm

Sorry, here’s the link to Steven Hill’s article: http://www.giantleap.org/envision/campaign.htm

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Campaign Finance Reform is a flop.

Good thinking! After all, if the government is too weak to prevent Big Business from raping the nation then they wouldn’t have to spend money trying to elect people who will allow them to rape the nation! :rolleyes:

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