COuld Campaign Reform = Permanent Incumbents?

Great Debates
1

It’s not hard to understand why campaign finance reform appeals to people. And yet, I wonder if its supporters have thought through the implications of campaign finance reform.

To make my argument non-partisan, imagine two political wannabes:

  1. Jamaal Robinson is a leading community activist in Houston, Texas. He’s been a leader of voting registration drives, a campaigner for hate crimes legislation, a champion of Planned Parenthood, and an articulate voice for gun control. He’d like very much to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Phil Gramm.

  2. Kevin Shaughnessy is a devout Catholic Bostonian, and an advocate for conservative, traditional family values. He wants to run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by John Kerrey.

Now, BOTH men would face enormous obstacles in running for the Senate, under the best of circumstances. Kerrey and Gramm are very popular in their states, and are probably shoe-ins to win against ANY opponent. Regardless, Robinson and Shaughnessy decide to take on the powerful incumbents.

Right off the bat, both challengers face a huge problem. NOBODY knows who they are, while EVERYBODY knows their opponents’ names. How, exactly, are Mr. Robinson or Mr. Shaughnessy to win name recognition (never mind votes)? The answer is simple: they HAVE to advertise heavily. That means they need a LOT of money. Where are they supposed to get it?

Well, Mr. Robinson’s best potential source of funding is… the major labor unions, of course! They hate Gramm, and would love to see him ousted. If they see ANY weakness in the Gramm camp, they’ll give Mr. Robinson funds, they’ll provide him with phone banks and volunteers, and they’ll start launching attack ads against Senator Gramm.

As for Mr. Shaughnessy, he’d turn to Christian groups and to leading businesses. If THEY saw any chance of unseating Senator Kerrey, they’d fund Mr. Shaughnessy and start running attack ads against the Senator.

Their chances STILL wouldn’t be good, but the money they’d get might give them some chance of competing.

Now, what if there were strict campaign finance laws out there? Well, then Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shaughnessy would have no way of buying the TV time they need to gain exposure. On primary day and Election Day, nobody will know who they are.

On the other hand, Senator Kerrey and Senator Gramm can use their positions to get on television ANY time they want to. And due to the franking privilege, they can mail out propaganda literature to their constituents any time they like, free of charge. So, how do you expect the outsider to compete?

Even without campaign finance reform, two developments have been notweworthy over the past few decades: there have been loads of mega-rich people running for office, spending their own money. And there have been loads of celebrities (Sonny Bono, football star Steve Largent, et al) running for office. Why? Because a non-celebrity would have to spend millions to achieve the name recognition Fred “Gopher” Grandy already had! If campaign finance reform takes effect, this trend will only get worse.
You’ll see MORE TV stars and billionaires in Congress.

Would that be an improvement? I remain unconvinced.

2

I think it’s a given that TV stars should run our country, but I digress.

The problem with your argument is that the current system already produces permanent incumbents. Over the past several election cycles, incumbent Congressmen and Senators have won re-election some 85-95% of the time. Admittedly, this isn’t a perfect figure; undoubtedly, there have been a few Congresspeople who chose not to run for re-election because they know they will lose.
For every Robinson and Shaughnessy out there under the current system, there are likely dozens of people who decide not to run because Senator X already has a multimillion dollar war chest.

Sua

3

Mmm, but you should remember that current candidates are already operating under a set of laws that makes them have to work harder for seed money than they should (IMO). Right now individuals can’t give more than 1k to a candidate, so unless the candidate is rich, he has to spend more time fundraising than if this law hadn’t already been in place. The CFR law being proposed would make this bad situation downright ridiculous.

4

Hey why not Alan Autry seems to be doing OK as the mayor of fresno.

5

And those "EVERYBODY"s are what’s providing the incumbent’s with money. The theory behind finance reform is that the incumbent’s would lose the advantage of sheer numbers-popularity and “equal the playing field”.

In theory.

6

I’m far more worried about the implications to free speech. If you read the Federalist papers, it’s clear that the framers of the constitution were most concerned about protecting political speech. To me, free speech means being able to spend your time, effort, and money supporting the causes you believe in.

I’d support certain aspects of campaign reform. Full disclosure laws are fine. Laws that prohibit unions from using member dues to support political causes (my wife is constantly furious that she has to spend $200 a year on dues, of which about 25% goes directly to support causes and beliefs she opposes).

7

Corporate sponsored issue ads and donations would also need to be banned if we are truly interested in protecting individuals freedom of speech.

8

So Squink, if you block those, do you also want to block, let’s say, The Sierra Club from running an issue ad during campaign season? Or NORML or NARAL or the NRA or the ACLU? Or even Common Cause?
How, exactly, does banning speech further the cause of free speech?
(In a related question, how does banning or restricting political action, which giving to campaigns and political organizations is, further the cause of free speech?)

9

Sure, ban them all. The millions spent by corporations to promote their own political agendas can easily drown out the voice of individual voters. Under those circumstances the individuals supposed “freedom of speech” is meaningless because it can have no affect on anything. (insert pie in sky emoticon here)

On a more practical note, choosing which types of organizations should have their political voice muted is trickier than it was portrayed to be in Sam’s “angry wife” argument. Unions are at least supposedly formed to represent the interests of workers, and this naturally includes the workers political interests; regardless of whether individual members see the wisdom of the unions position on the issues. On the other hand corporations are seldom formed to represent anyones interest. They are created to make money ! As such, the promotion of a political agenda by a corporation does not serve some individual or groups interest, it serves the interest of the organization. This being a government of by and for the people, rather than “the company”, it seems that organizations created for political reasons, and for reasons of bettering the lot of individuals have a claim to the right of “freedom of speech” than do faceless corporations operating on nothing but the profit motive.
-But then I don’t think corporate money should be entirely banned either, simply kept under better control.

10

I like campaign reform, it’s always seemed like a good thing to me…

Of course I’d also like to see term limits, just based on the concept that I think there should be fresh blood injected in there on a regular basis and that it is my opinion that elected office shouldn’t be a lifetime job.

What are the standard argument against term limits?

-Doug

11

[Hijack in answer to dublos]

The standard argument against term limits is that term limits already exist…in the form of elections.

Pretty simple, really.

[/hijack]

12

Fighting McCain-Feingold on the grounds that it would benefit incumbents is one rather duplicitous argument being advanced by conservatives (i.e. Charles Krauthammer in his editorial column today). As noted, incumbents already have a huge advantage. Lopping off a chunk of their soft money might level the playing field to the point where candidates actually have to concentrate on inspiring volunteers and going back to door-to-door campaigning, rather than relying on attack ads.

Other arguments against reform that I find faulty and/or repulsive - that 1) it will benefit rich candidates who spend their fortunes to get elected, and 2) it will place right-wing candidates at the mercy of the biased “lords of the media”. The latter argument (also voiced recently by William Buckley) takes an accurate premise (left-wing major media bias) and misuses it* to argue that we need to be barraged by a ton of paid-for deceptive crap to even things out.

The news media can help answer both of these arguments by providing increased free air time for political candidates, as partial recompense for their windfall of political ad money.

McCain-Feingold is a start. I expect the liberals to join hands with their right-wing counterparts to try and strangle this baby to death (after all, the Democrats have drawn virtually even with the GOPs in soft-money raising, and have a vested interest in protecting the current corrupt system).
But if the bill survives, maybe it’ll help hold the line until we can dig up a few Supreme Court justices who don’t equate a wad of thousand-dollar bills with “free speech”.

As for “Jamaal Robinson”, theoretical Houston community activist who wants to run against Phil Gramm - my dream race would feature a real Houston black city councilman, Jew Don Boney against Phil Gramm. Man, the entertainment value alone…

*For anyone who believes in real campaign finance reform and is willing to excuse left-wing media bias, here’s another hidden price to pay for that attitude.

13

Jackmanii, let’s leave the principle aside for the moment. If you further attempt to restrict campaign giving and spending, you will simply drive the influence-peddling underground. In the old days, we all knew that Senator Jackson of Washington could also be characterized, not surprisingly, as the Senator from Boeing. This was a given. Drive it underground, and all you’re going to do is make it harder to figure out where the levers of influence are. But those levers are still going to exist.
These crazy attempts to take the influence out of politics, like this isn’t what politics is all about for crying out loud, will accomplish nothing.

14

Is this sort of the campaign finance equivalent of “if we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns”? Quite frankly, I find this argument to be pretty strange. Although, I would agree that the whole McCain-Feingold reforms do suffer from an approach that is a bit too piecemeal. For one thing, hard money is a big problem too.

Better would be some sort of public financing of elections (like the reforms adopted in Maine, I believe). When people start yelping about how they don’t want to pay for these candidates, I have to think they are denser than lead…For God sake’s, you are paying already! Hell, you are paying many times over. Because as some organizations have pointed out, returns on campaign contributions are rarely just say 25 or 50%…they are typically thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousand of percent!

Still, McCain-Feingold is a small step in the right direction.

15

Implicit in this discussion is that bribery = free speech. I don’t buy it. The problem with the current system is that the people or entities without money have little voice in Washington. And by “voice” I mean “influence”.

P.J. O’Rourke wrote a book called Parliaiment of Whores which neatly explained how the system works. Of course, once his party (the GOP) took over Congress and nothing changed, he doesn’t talk about this much anymore…

The public airwaves are just that, and the Feds are granting an incredibly valuable boon to the owners of radio and TV stations by providing them a slice of the public spectrum for next to nothing. In return for this value, the radio and TV stations should be required to dedicate a certain amount of that bandwidth to free campaign advertising. If there’s no need for money to get the message out, then “free” speech becomes more possible. Warren Buffet had a very good article on this topic today - it’s probably syndicated and thus may hit other newspapers on other days.

Bribery and extortion are illegal in this country, yet the current soft money system works exactly the same way. The system is awash in quid pro quo situations, always of course vehemently denied. It’s time to throw this system, and the political whores it created, out.

In answer to the term limits question: I am against term limits. I think term limits are a band-aid to the real problem, which is a money-drenched system that favors incumbents. Get the money out of the system, and the need for term limits may go away.

16

I can’t exclude the possibility that tighter clamps on soft money will cause some increase in under-the-table payouts to lawmakers. But I don’t envision hordes of Congressmen and staffers lurking around parking garages waiting to accept attache cases full of cash from lobbyists. If it happens, I’ll happily accept a doubling of the FBI budget for sting operations.

A lack of any meaningful limit on campaign spending just doesn’t equal “good government” in my book. I’d like to see you or anyone with sufficient energy, good ideas and the ability to inspire others have a realistic shot of gaining national office, without either being hugely rich or willing to whore on a non-stop basis for special interest dough.

17

Free speech is already limited by time, place, and manner restrictions. A (dubious) analogy is that you can fly a big banner that asserts your political position, but you can’t make one so big that it blocks the entrance to a building.
Another proof that giving money to a politician is not always free speech is the existence of bribery laws. A valid way of looking at McCain-Feingold is that it is an extension of bribery laws.

Quite frankly, this makes no sense (and yes, I am a former union member, and yes, I didn’t agree with all the positions my union had). How is a union different than a corporation? Both are legal entities, and both give money to causes they support. I don’t claim to have a right to stop Coca-cola from giving the money I spend on its products to Jesse Helms. Either both should be banned or neither. If both are allowed to donate, than the solution for the person who disagrees with them in both cases is the same - embargo. Leave the union - stop buying Coke.

Sua

18

I agree with what TPayne and Warren Buffett said, that the reason campaigns cost so much is that the TV stations are making out like bandits. They are the ones charging so much money for advertising time for broadcasts on the supposedly public airwaves. Cut out the middleman and regulate the amount they charge for advertising time, that’s a campaign reform I advocate.

I’d also support eliminating donations that cross state lines. A person living in New York should only be able to contribute to candidates running in NY or running to represent NY in the House or the Senate, and not for a candidate in Ohio or North Dakota or California. For profit corporations should not be able to contribute at all, since they cannot vote, but at best they should only be able to contribute to races in the state where they are incorporated.

19

PatrickM: How, exactly, would you regulate this? This is one nation, after all, and money can move within our borders in a completely free manner. Indeed, this free movement of money is required by the Constitutional clause that prohibits protectionist measures being erected by one state against another state.
As to the oft-mentioned idea that corporations and unions, because they are unable to vote, should be barred from contributing to a candidates’ campaign: these organizations, like anyone else, are affected, sometimes very importantly affected, by the laws passed by our representatives. I see nothing wrong with allowing them some influence over our representatives, given that their very existence may be threatened by some law or other that some politician or other may propose. Barring them from having any influence is simply unfair.
jshore: More like the arguments against Prohibition and our current drug laws. Trying to keep the influence out of politics is like telling a fish it can’t breathe underwater anymore. Influence is politics, politics is all about influence. I’m as idealistic as anyone, but reality is reality. And as Prohibition and our current drug debacle shows, trying to deny reality doesn’t get you very far.

20

pantom,

I just don’t understand this argument. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that wealth entitles one to buy the government. I agree that free speech laws place important limits on how speech can be regulated, but I think the view that freedom of speech means those with the biggest megaphone get to drown out everyone else is sort of a silly conception of what free speech is all about. Money rules in all other aspects of the world; to allow it to rule completely unchecked in the political realm is simply inexcusable.