PAC Power

...Worst of all, by undercutting the parties they are destablhzmg and counterproductwe...

...Looks hke they've Sahato is Inghly critical of both NCPAC and ItS leftist counterpart PROPAC He sees them as loose cannons on the sinp of state, contemptuous of parties, and taking gmdance from no one but the one or two entrepreneurs who operate them They m~slead contributors, who do not reahze that only a few penmes out of every dollar they contribute goes to the cause...

...Between the bogeymen Tip O'Neill and Teddy Kennedy or James Watt and Jesse Helms, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 everyone right or left Is supposed to become scared enough to send money...

...On the other hand, conservative populists defend them as necessary "Tins campaign to kill the PACs is snobbish, elitist, antidemocrauc, and un-American," writes Patrick J Buchanan "Destroy the PACs and you constrict the voice of small business, and restrict the political access of the mllhons who support them---enhancing the clout of Big Mecha, Big Business, Big Labor Vol 28 no 2 (121) Vol 28 no 3 (122) Elsewhere s US $10 37 and their ilk who can afford to mamtmn permanent lobbying representation m [Washington] " One ~mportant group of PACs escapes Sabato's usually thorough coverage the pro-Israel orgamzat~ons like NaUonal PAC In 1984 $9 mllhon went through these groups, primarily to defeat Senators Charles Percy and Jesse Helms and other "enemies" of Israel Helms proved much more sucfor the GOP control of the Senate The bottom hne is that PACs are probably a force for the good By provldmg the "United Way" for cmzens to contribute money, they have enlarged the scope of popular support for the pohtical process By mandating detailed &sclosures, the PAC system has largely ehmmated the illegal under-thetable contribution The parties have successfully responded to the PACs by cessful than his opponent in raising treating them hke another set of interest groups to broker, and by strengthening their own party services PAC money accounts for only a small fraction of the money in pohtics--thelr total spending is less than the adverusmg budget of Procter and Gamble PACs have much less influence on legislation than do lobbies or the parues themselves Finally, they have helped tilt the pohttcal dmlogue in America to the right Ronald Reagan m 1983 stud he was "a httle amused that suddenly our opponents have outreach programs, you know that in developed a conscience about political action committees I don't remember them being that aroused when the only ones you knew about were on their s~de...

...been stepping in what they've been tryIn practice only two or three percent of mg to sell...

...PAC POWER Larry J. Sabato/W W Norton/S15 95 Pochard Jensen P o h t l c a l Action Comm~ttees-- contributions by about one fourth of of the letters When NCPAC does PACs--have burst on the scene in re- a given company's managers and spend funds on independent camcent years, and they frighten people...

...winte-collar employees, and control IS pmgns against a liberal, the sure "The role of PACs m our system of exerted through pubhc affairs offices campaign finance has become nothing Business PACs give about equally to out of state...

...the people sohcited by direct marl respond, and they usually give no more than ten or twenty dollars Conservative operations, such as Terry Dolan's NCPAC, have rinsed four Umes as much money as their hberal counterparts, but little of tins money goes to candidates because of the enormous cost of direct mail solicItauon Of course, even people who do not contribute may be affected by the contents response ~s to denounce agitators from TWO NEW ISSUES OUT NOW Summer 1984 HOW VULNERABLE IS THE WEST...

...As a young pastor "there was something obsessive" about the way Falwell went about "Few of the other preachers were as hungry for anything but a defense of Falwell...

...In 1982 NCPAC spent short of scandalous," wrote Morns the two parties, and favor incumbents, $228,000 against liberal Senator John Udall m a fund-rinsing letter "I'm talk- especaally those who represent r Melcher of Montana, a veterinarian ing about the dangerous and corrupt- with a factory or branch office...

...Sabato Melcher ran commercials showmg two mg influence of the outrageous sums notes that a remarkable 65 percent of cows watching suspicious looking men of money--campmgn contrthuUons-- the cinef executwe officers of large cor- descending from an airplane with winch have become a paralyzing poraUons now travel to Washington NCPAC briefcases stuffed with money obscemty" Thanks to the dlhgent in- every two weeks or so, ten years ago, "Have you heard what they're saying terviews and data collection of Univer- only 15 percent did Clearly the decisity of Virginia pohtlcal sclenUst Larry sions that affect their corporations are Sabato In his new book PAC Power, we made in Wasinngton, and they need acnow have a comprehenswe overview of cess to the decision-makers in Conwhat PACs are, how they operate, and gress Cash opens the doors--but not what impact they are hawng on much is needed, for their average conpohUcs tnbuuon is only $657 Trade associations of realtors, physi- The first PAC, and stdl one of the largest and most mfluentml, was cians, denttsts, builders, gun dealers, COPE--the Committee on Polmcal and the like are more concerned wath EducaUon set up by the CIO m 1943 specific leg~slaUon and regulatory rules to avoid restrictions on d~rect political than w~th the general access that coractivity by labor unions COPE played poraUons seek Their 628 PAC operaa critical role in moblhzlng labor sup- tions (winch spent $42 tmlhon m 1982) port for the last hurrahs of the New are separate from their much more Deal in 1944 and 1948 It also was a elaborate lobbying operaUons Confavorite target of Repubhcan attacks as gressman Andrew Jacobs (D-Indiana), an Insidious threat to democracy, par- who refuses all PAC money, says "the tlcularly m 1946 when the GOP won only reason it is not considered bribery control of Congress by large margins is that Congress gets to def'me bribery" Umons continued to set up new PACs Sahato disagrees, finding that the lob201 were operating in 1974 and 378 in byasts have much more influence in 1983 In 1982 they spent $35 mflhon, Congress than the money givers PAC largely m the form of direct contrlbu- contributions have a small effect on Uons to liberal Democrats seeking re- congressional voting Only on relatwely election Thus Senator Howard nunor ~tems of special interest to a few Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) received assocmUons but not m the national $227,000 that year Although this sum spothght can fancy statistical tests constituted only 7 percent of his war detect the influence of PAC money on chest, it was deeply apprecmted roll call votes On the other hand, conBusiness PACs account for the gressmen often demand money from greatest growth m "PAC power" in re- the PACs...

...CHINA'S DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT HUNGARY OUT OF THE MEMORY HOLE ORWELL Autumn 1984 YUGOSLAVIA TITO AND AFTER EAST GERMANY PROTESTS AND PROTESTANTS THE SOVIET UNION OLD HABITS AND NEW JOKES Annual subscrlpUon UK s US $39 Single copies UK s SURVEY Editorial Office Ilford House, 133 Oxford Street, London WIR 1TD, England (Tel 01-734 0592) SURVEY Subscription Office 59 St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4JS, England (Tel 01-836 4194) about Doc Melcher...

...To souls" as he was, and it is that hunger that has made him what he is These are worldly vu'tues Falwell has his credit, D'Souza treats his subject with grace and thoroughness, and turns what could easily be shrill justification THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 "worry a httle less about the length of your son's h a i r " It is Falwell whose vigorous support of Israel has confronted much of fundamentalism's...

...they are especmlly keen on cent years They became legal m 1974 filling the tables at thetr $250-a-plate m the wake of Watergate revelations Washington fundralsers that the Nlxon campazgn had shaken down corporauons for mdhons of dollars m illegal contnbutaons For the The most controversial PACs are the first Ume a system of legal business Independent ideological operaUons contnbuUons to poliucs, with full that fill our mmlboxes every week with disclosure, became possible Some 1,467 corporate PACs operated m 1982, with budgets totalling $43 mllhon Their money comes from voluntary tremists dormnate the Senator Richard Jensen ts professor of h~tory at the Untverstty o f Ilhnots, Chtcagtx dire warnings against the evildoers about to seize the government from the hands of the people "Right-wing exThrow the rascals out...

...Now they're on.our s~de and they want to do away wath them Well, they're not going to do away w~th [] money Percy lost in good measure because of the defection of Jewish voters m Chicago The best news Sabato presents ~s that PACs have helped the national party organ~zatlons to become powerful forces for the first time The Repubhcan party has been the chief beneficmry The $215 mdhon it rinsed m 1982 (and much more m 1984) funded an elaborate program of polhng, training of candidates, computerized ~ssue files, data banks of voters and constituency characteristics, d~rect mailings, TV ads, and $20 mllhon m direct md to can&dates This has given Repubhcan senatorial candldates a deosive edge m close elections Of the 29 close races in 1980, 1982, and 1984, the Repubhcans won 21 and lost only 8, thus accounting FALWELL: BEFORE THE MILLENNIUM Dlnesh D'Souza/Regnery Gateway/S14 95 Malcolm T Gladwell ( ( I n 9 a rare and mexphcable moment" when Jerry Falwell was but a chdd, his father put his hand on his son's head and said" "This one will be himself That brashness made him s~ons...

...So it seems fmr to ask when posing his rehglous behefs on the rest my preacher" And when, m his early popular, made him king of his class, of America But I wonder If Falwell twenties after a wild and high-spirited youth, Falwell was born again, his mother "merely smiled to herself, as ff she had expected it all along " These were the portents of Falwell's youth, the signs he added up at the beginning of his ministry that made him sure, so very sure, that he was right with God Others have paused, agonized, unsure of God's purpose, before does, that "I have always been full of accepting a vocaUon But not Falwell He charged headlong into the mmlstry to his contemporaries, and says he's at with the same brash determlnaUon that was later to assure him that his followers were moral and m the majority As a boy he was the prankster, the Malcolm T Gladwell ts assistant managing editor of The American Spectator 38 brought to preaching It Is stud that In into a genuinely good read But in the his frantic soul-saving Falwell "seemed process he steers clear of the lmphcato need measurable indices of his suc- tions of Falwell's move into the cess ten more students this week, four political arena D'Souza doesn't seem people accepting Christ after a service, to want to acknowledge that the Falwell e t c " For Jerry Falwell it is "as impor- who once held to the fundamentalist tant to count new heads as ~t had been orthodoxy that Christians were not for his father to count income at the called upon to "wage wars against end of a workday" Falwell has a gen- bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, uine business sense It is he who is murderers, prostitutes, racketeers credited with starting "saturation or any other existing evil as such," and evangehsm" which means he didn't just now does precisely that with his preach on Sunday, or just have a radio political lobby group Moral Majority, ministry, or just have people witness- is no longer in the great tradition of mg door to door--he did everything, fundamentalist preachers from Dwight all at once, so that if he didn't get you Moody to Billy Sunday and Billy at home, he got you on TV, or in your Hargls D'Souza doesn't want to beheve car, or in a shopping mall Falwell that Falwelrs secular activities have brought the ministry into the twentieth tainted him and pushed him in any way century He crossed the line from from the traditional fundamentalist religious to secular and brought back pattern Wasn't Falwell's move into all kinds of new ideas So much so, in politics simply a natural outgrowth of fact, that when you look at Falwell and the old fundamentalism9 Isn't Falwell's his TV show, his mailing lists, and his constituency those whose beliefs have made them the political and social outthe end he isn't so much a preacher for casts of the last fifty years ~ And the Lord as he is a salesman How much has religion changed them " weren't they, D'Souza asks, those who were laughed out of the Scopes trial in Jerry Falwell~ Has it left any imprint 1925, and whose convictions for a on him at all~ When Falwell was young moral and upright America were and wild, he would skip Sunday school mocked and violated in the sixties and and scorn rehglon "as something seventles'~ The Bible says to turn the women did " Now, though, now that other cheek, but sometimes even for Falwell has accepted Christ, he insists the very Christian enough is enough that "Christ wasn't effeminate Christ D'Souza says that Falwell simply realwas a he-man " Could Falwell, the ized that getting the Chnstmn message high-school star once invited to a St across in the eighties required moving Louis Cardinals tryout, only accept a to a higher stage and regaining some God as manly as himself') Today he has respect for Christian behefs That was a "theology of sport", he calls his con- a change of style, but not of content gregatlon to be "champions for With the Moral Majority, the book tells Chnst," and at his Liberty Bapust Col- us, Falwell pursues the same evangehcal lege moral admonmons rank up there goals of putting morality back into with the construction of a new gym- everyday life and bringing America nasmm If Jerry is a jock, does his closer to fundamentahsm that underlie Jesus have to be one too~ In short, &d his ministry at Thomas Road Church Chnstmmty change Falwell or was the m Lynchburg This Is a beguiling thesis, especially because if so closely correlates with the youth to fit his own mascuhne d~men- Falwell of hberal legend--the man imsports hero, the hfe of the party He reverse true~ Did Falwell himself was reckless and danng because, in the change the effeminate rehgion of his end, he had complete confidence in Falwell says that "I have always hked what I do, whether it is sports or be- is so bent on bringing America closer ing a mlmster," whether he sees a dif- to the fundamentalists, then why has ference between the two, and ff he his primary achievement been to do exdoesn't, whether that means, In the actly the opposite9 Why has Falwelrs sum of all Falwell's contradictory parts, most significant contribution to his he Is more a creature of the secular froth been in making it more aware of world than the kingdom of God but when he brought it to do the Lord's work was it out of place'~ Certainly to those of us schooled in the stud~ed humdlty of the older churches--of a Cathohc priest, of an Anghcan curate--Falwell, his atutude, his chutzpah come as a shock Are the deeply rehglous to be so compeUUve, so driven ~ Should they gloat, as Falwell T h a t is a question Dlnesh D'Souza and more compauble with the outside world 9 It is Falwell who has led the fight In his own church, and later in fundamentahst churches throughout amhitlon'"~ Falwell compares himself doesn't answer in FalwelL Before the the South, for an end to segregation Mdlenmum This is a case of the right Now "he speaks of race almost in the dealing with one of ItS own, and despite vocabulary of civil rights leaders " the book's subtltle--"A Critical It is Falwell who, with his gentle wit, Biography" (which one assumes to be has mocked the strictness of his tronlc)--lt never pretends to be followers, urging each of them to the top because he works harder than anyone else...