Dirty Little Secrets
Sabato, Larry J. & Simpson, Glenn R.
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Dirty Little Secrets" concluded a "sacred covenant" with Farrakhan, most caucus members approved. "To my amazement," writes Franks, "I sensed a tremendous amount of support for the Nation of Islam within the caucus." The...
...2. the importance of soft money and independent expenditures made campaign financing considerably more secretive than it had been previously...
...trict is 9o percent white-rejected this advice...
...In fact, Sabato and Simpson are prone to hand-wringing over "negative campaigning" and the decline of "civility," which they describe as "sleaze"-that raised-eyebrow word that the sanctimonious use to make aggressiveness or tactlessness sound like dishonesty or corruption...
...or the bumper stickers distributed by the NRA and labor groups, which are allowed to engage in "educational" activities out side of FEC law, provided they "educate" only their members...
...Carr traveled a regular circuit from Los Angeles to Houston to Louisville, collecting campaign money from those he was supposed to watch...
...That is, there's a limit to what money can buy, even in politics...
...To his great credit, Franks-whose dis...
...At one point, they refer to "the political boss Mark Hanna, who built a Republican political money empire in the 189o's that was so great public opinion could not abide it...
...Old-line Republicans had their own 4 The problem is that Gin grich does not really want to undo corrupt government, either...
...Even more than his opposition to racial set-asides, Franks' outspoken criticism of racial redistricting enraged the other members of the CBC...
...The idea that only blacks could represent blacks and only whites could represent whites seemed an anathema to basic American principles," he writes...
...How does the system work...
...tered...
...and another to non-Jews that says, "As a United States Senator from New York, my going to the Middle East to visit our troops would send a clear message of commitment, compassion, and concern...
...The greatest strength of Larry Sabato and Glenn Simpson's Dirty Little Secrets is that it takes V.0...
...Al D'Amato can send a letter to Jews in his state saying, "As a United States Senator from New York, my going to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would send a clear message of commitment, compassion, and concern...
...And he can't undo corrupt government without all the weapons at his disposal...
...I bet he doesn't have chocolate ice cream on top of his apple pie," chortled Brooklyn's Major Owens...
...Yet a few things should be said in Gingrich's defense...
...Many Republicans, recognizing that racial redistricting would actually make it easier for them to win in areas that had gone Democratic in the past, cynically endorsed this liberal initiative...
...The fewer regulations, the less money spent to influence the regulatory process...
...Charles Rangel smiled and said, "Let him have his pie and ice cream before he leaves...
...The only thing that seemed to bother members about Mfume's action was that it would complicate their fund-raising efforts among Jewish supporters...
...At the height of the Keating Five affair, California senator Alan Cranston complained he was being railroaded: "In every case of financial impropriety considered by the Senate throughout its history," said Cranston, "the alleged misconduct was the use of public office for a Senator's private profit...
...Since his ascension to the speakership," the authors write, "Gingrich has seemed reluctant to deny himself and his co-revolutionaries the luxuries most enjoyed by the `dictatorship' he had replaced, such as access to a bountiful supply of campaign contributions from those who eagerly pay tribute to rulers...
...Newt Gingrich, who called the system a "dictatorship," was almost alone in understanding the level of corruption, that "Democrats had changed the fundamental dynamics of the game...
...There are refinements on this incumbency-protection system-the use of nominally nonpartisan interest groups to make "independent expenditures," franked mail, the detailing of government-paid staff to do campaign work-and computer-age technology makes all of them more effective in restricting competition...
...What's more, the dollar value of Gingrich's hidden hand in the last election cycle is a mere fraction of the money that President Clinton has illegally disposed of in this election cycle, according to Bob Woodward in The Choice...
...Republicans suc ceeded in overcoming it in 1994 not because the system became fairer, but because they possessed an organizational genius in Newt Gingrich, who himself mastered the rules of the corrupt campaign system and turned them to his advantage...
...By starving the campaigns of money, the reforms also put a premium on "soft money" (the lessaccountable campaign funding that comes from party treasuries rather than individual campaigns) and "independent expenditures" from nominally nonpartisan groups, which often as not are in the back pocket of party interests...
...What's more, GOPAC effectively "bundled" money to national candidates, using its network to keep proven state donors abreast of national funding needs...
...The linchpin of the Republican takeover was GOPAC, which Gingrich inherited from former Delaware governor Pete du Pont in 1986...
...Finally, and most seriously, the reforms affected the way we are governed: The most opportunistic of the post-Watergate innovations in Congress was the proliferation of subcommittees, on the pretext of...
...But the deeper problemwhich the authors fail to identify-is a liberal state that puts regulatory matters of special interests at issue in the first place...
...3. the shortage of money in absolute terms fostered bang-for-the-buck television-based campaigning...
...Money's Not the Worst of It: Who'll Reform the Reforms...
...I'lii•iitih,,I i Ti :,• Institute for Policy Innovation CREDIT CARD ORDERS CALL LAISSEZ FAIRE B DKS 1-800-326-0996 fheAmericanSpectator • September 1996 83...
...and (b) the public could make its own judgment of whether a candidate had been "bought " It is this trust that the electorate will know when it's being manipulated that makes Sabato and Simpson's reform plan so admirable...
...It is impossible to see what is in the least bit objectionable about these calls, either in the letter or the spirit of the laws...
...Gingrich's activities-like designing a college course to "explain [the] future to the American people in a way that captures first their imagination and then their votes"-do violate the spirit of FEC laws, as the authors note...
...And given that Democrats were using soft money to beat Republicans over the head, not using GOPAC for all it was worth would have been mere masochism...
...Politicians love this definition of corruption, because none of them care about money-they care about power...
...I n 1989, when House Speaker Jim Wright was being driven from politics by a Newt Gingrich-led investigation of his finances, he called journalist John Barry into his office and burst into tears...
...81 The American Spectator • September 1996 weaning from power the "old bulls" who had exercised autocratic power for decades...
...Let them have what they want...
...The problem-as he has made clear through his cowardice in dismantling affirmative action -is that Gingrich does not really want to undo corrupt government, either...
...after all, "he doesn't care about money...
...Although Democrats still use "walking-around money" to pay off church, NAACP, and other leaders in black neighborhoods, by the authors' own admission, it is as much a liability as an assetforcing the Democrats to pay for an elec 82 September 1996 • The American Spectator toral base to run against one that their opponents get for free...
...I have only $ioo,ooo in the bank...
...By the time Republicans took back both houses in 1994, half the Democrats in the House and 8o percent in the Senate headed committees or subcommittees...
...Limits on contributions would be removed or dramatically reduced, but there would be strin gent rules about disclosing where all campaign money came from...
...Similarly President Clinton's allies claim his Whitewater shenanigans can't be corrupt...
...For if democracy is threatened by people incapable of telling whether a telephone call is a poll or a paid political attack, or unable to determine the merits of a personal attack on a candidate, then we're too dumb for the franchise to start with...
...I'll pass on both," I said and quickly departed...
...campaigns in which pro-lifers contacted a list of voters saying, "Hello Mr...
...Because its stated role was to develop a "farm team" of Republican candidates at the state level, it was not subject to federal election laws, and could quietly accept huge donations without any accountability to the Federal Election Commission (FEC...
...But today computers can target voters and break them down into different mailing lists...
...Look," one Republican operative told Franks, "the Democrats have been pushing this for years...
...FAi BUSTER'S GUIDE i0 BIG VERNMEM Big Government is taxing, spending, borrowing, mandating and regulating America to death, devouring 42 cents of every dollar earned nationwide...
...They make the case that such raw, old-fashioned corruption as election fraud and bought elections are on the rise...
...So and So, we're calling from the state pro-life federation....Candidate A supports abortion on demand and using your tax dollars to pay for it...
...Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who was chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, and Rep...
...It's also what makes their hand-wringing over "sleaze" so misplaced...
...Everyone chuckled...
...This would ensure that (a) no one would be able to take secret advantage of legal loopholes for sham non-partisanship, as both leftwing labor and right-wing church groups have been doing for years...
...As speaker, Robert Michel of Illinois went along with the Democrats as much out of self-promotion as out of naYvete, "delivering worn homilies about the importance of cooperation as Democrats took his party to the cleaners...
...Lautenberg pushed legislation that lined the pockets of the rubber and asphalt moguls who subsidized his campaign...
...If they cared about money, they'd be businessmen...
...CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL, a former TAS senior editor, is senior writer at the Weekly Standard...
...Gingrich must undo corrupt government before he can undo corrupt campaigning...
...But the often-upheld "express advocacy" doctrine-that anything short of a "Vote for Jones"-style endorsement is not meddling in federal elections-makes it clear that he did not violate their letter...
...The authors focus on Sen...
...Candidate B does not support abortion on demand and opposes using your tax dollars to pay for it...
...Not surprisingly, once in power, the GOP has been slow to dismantle such an efficient instrument of power-consolidation...
...None of this good-government idealism should distract us from the admirable simplicity and workability of the reforms the authors propose...
...Read C~otennnent: America's #1 Qruwth Industry to find out what's gcmc wrong, and what you can do about it...
...The postWatergate reforms richest in unintended consequences were the limits on individual and Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions...
...As my little boy would say, "Yuck...
...Both filled their political war chests largely with money peeled out of transportation interests...
...By making money more expensive, such limits increased the influence of big donors, since candidates could not waste their time scrambling after small ones -they had to be extra-solicitous of those interests (usually PACs) that could max out at $5,000 per election and $io,ooo per cycle...
...The laughter grew louder...
...The authors describe last minute calls in several 1994...
...Bob Carr of Michigan, his opposite number in the House...
...Clinton's role in directing and designing a $25 million Democratic Party expenditure is explicitly illegal under FEC laws...
...The authors would have us believe we're going through a particularly corrupt period in American politics, and that Republican inaction will delay our emergence from it...
...Here, they're on weaker ground...
...he mut...
...The real corruption we should worry about today, the authors opine, is the nearly ironclad system of incumbency protection consolidated by Democrats over six decades of rule and codified in the Campaign Finance Reforms of the 1970's...
...Their warnings that Oregon's new mail-in voting and the Motor Voter Law could lead to systematic abuses are well taken, but there is little to indicate that we are in a crisis of electoral ethics any more severe than the one that has obtained for two decades...
...Half the work of government now is mediating between public-sector business interests the government has created...
...The authors' solution to our campaign finance crisis is "deregulation plus," which would have the FEC or a similar body regulate elections the way the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates the stock market...
...I have less money now than when I entered politics...
...Take the frank: Free congressional mail was an essential part of incumbents' advantage even in the old days...
...Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics Larry J. Sabato and Glenn R Simpson Times Books / 43o pages / $25 REVIEWED BY Christopher Caldwell...
...The same goes for the candidate voter guides issued by Christian Coalition and other non-profit groups, which, however slanted, do base themselves on candidates' voting records...
...The line between campaigning and governing blurs into insignificance...
...As for vote fraud, the authors point to open-and-shut cases in local elections in Philadelphia and Alabama, but nothing at the national level...
...Among their "baronial prerogatives" was the ability to shake down the people they regulated, giving them an unfair advantage over any challenger...
...Key's definition of graft-"abuse of power for personal or party profit" - and stipulates that the very worst corruption doesn't increase a politician's bank account...
...This had at least four highly negative consequences: 1. Given the special position of labor, which could use large parts of union dues for political organizing, the "reforms" gave, at least until the 198o's, a huge leg up to the Democrats...
...77 incumbency protected by this racket, provided they were content with minority status...
...Unable to bear the sight of him, they resolved to force Franks to leave each caucus session after the 30 minute luncheon: As the clock ticked closer to Iz:3o PM, I was still eating my lunch...
...Besides making them receptive to demagogues like Farrakhan, the CBC's search for authenticity has made its members strong supporters of congressional redistricting designed to create authentic black voting enclaves that can be relied upon to elect authentic black politicians...
...In one exceptionally suspect and often repeated transaction, Houston Mayor Bob Lanier corralled major donors to help Carr with fundraising, while Carr's committee gave Lanier a waiver to loot his city's transportation fund (half of which came from the federal government) to pay for popular political initiatives...
...GOPAC may have played the role it claimed it did, but its real agenda was national, as Gingrich made clear by asking in one September 1994 fundraising letter: "Will you help me draft the Republican legislative agenda for the 1o4th Congress...
...Their accusations of hypocrisy have much truth in them...
Vol. 29 • September 1996 • No. 9
