Taming the big bucks Only a democratically reinvigorated electorate can offset the influence of money
Jr, David R Carlin
DAVID R. CARLIN, JR. TAMING THE BIG BUCKS Democratic activism is the only way Given the attention the press is paying to the issue, I suppose it is inevitable that we'll have a campaign finance...
...But this particular problem is easy to deal with...
...Will that reduce the influence of big-money people in Washington...
...Politicians would welcome a reform that would allow them to campaign more cheaply...
...If we close all the doors, influence will come in through the windows and chimneys...
...Certainly there is something unseemly about rewarding big contributors with nights in the so-called Lincoln bedroom...
...It's too strong only in a relative sense, which is to say that influences other than big money are too weak...
...There is no help for that...
...Ours is supposed to be a system of checks and balances...
...My suggestion is that the Lincoln bedroom be renamed "the Franklin Pierce bedroom...
...This is true as a general rule, but it is especially true in a society marked by economic and political liberty, where money and ideas move freely...
...Only TV stations would object, since they get the biggest chunk of money spent on campaigns for major office...
...What happens then...
...All the rest is talk...
...another sign is the smaller and smaller numbers who vote in elections (less than 50 percent of all adult citizens in the presidential election of 1996...
...Well, not quite...
...This is proposed, oddly enough, by some of the same people who nearly faint from shock when anyone suggests amending the First Amendment in order to permit prayer in schools...
...A sign of this is the decline in political party loyalty...
...Frankly, I doubt it...
...Is this compatible with the spirit of democracy...
...Not at all...
...Only someone unacquainted with rich people, politicians, and human nature could believe that these folks won't be able to get around any system of restrictions written into law-especially if they are the very people writing the restrictions...
...Running for high political office is a terribly expensive exercise...
...Isn't it, rather, an oligarchical element in our system...
...According to this view, the big money scandal is so outrageous, the influence of wealth on politics so corrupting, that it is worth meddling with the First Amendment...
...Or at least we'll have something called "campaign finance reform...
...But a reform of this type would do little to touch the deeper problem, namely that rich individuals and corporations have an enormously disproportionate influence on American elections...
...So is this a counsel of despair I'm offering...
...Since Pierce was both a Democrat and a presidential nonentity, no one's sense of fairness or sa-credness will be outraged if President Bill Clinton lets Barbra Streisand spend a night with the ghost of the fourteenth president...
...Using his name to raise political money carries the aroma of sacrilege, of simony...
...Well, let's suppose the Constitution gets amended and all sorts of restrictions are imposed on giving and taking and spending...
...Contributors too would welcome this reform, since it would allow them to buy influence at cheaper rates...
...A far more serious problem is the enormous importance of big money in elections for major office...
...If we want to tame our oligarchy, the only realistic way of doing so is by restoring our democracy...
...Of course not...
...Consequently, many of our campaign finance reformers propose to impose strict limits on how much can be given by contributors, how much can be spent by candidates, even on how much can be spent by candidates out of their own pockets...
...A society's political system is a reflection of its social system...
...Compounding the offense is the fact that the first Republican president is being exploited for Democratic ends...
...If wealth is unevenly distributed in the United States, so will political influence be unevenly distributed...
...TAMING THE BIG BUCKS Democratic activism is the only way Given the attention the press is paying to the issue, I suppose it is inevitable that we'll have a campaign finance reform law before the next round of congressional elections...
...In fairness, if the Lincoln bedroom is to be "sold" to contributors, this commercial privilege should have been reserved for a GOP president...
...Apart from a few interludes of violent revolutionary upheaval, when aristocrats have occasionally been known to swing from lampposts, does history give us any examples of regimes in which the rich have not had a political influence vastly disproportionate to their numbers...
...Candidates are forced to spend an appalling amount of time on their knees begging for money, and the people who contribute generally do so not out of a spirit of good citizenship but because they expect something in return...
...Laws can alter the channels through which moneyed influence will flow, but they can't prevent the influence...
...We have allowed the democratic element in our politics to deteriorate...
...After all, Lincoln is a quasi-sacred personality, the great American sage, saint, and martyr...
...It is futile to try to eliminate the inevitable-the operation of the oligarchic principle in American political life...
...The problem with American politics today is not that big-money influence is too strong in some absolute sense...
...Whether it will actually reform anything is another question...
...Why then imagine that the United States, in the waning days of the twentieth century, can do what no body politic has ever done before...
...Rich people don't get rich by being stupid, and politicians don't make it to Washington by being stupid either...
...When it is objected that such limits won't pass muster with the Supreme Court, which is likely to view them as infringements of the free-speech clause of the First Amendment, the reformers have a ready answer: "Amend the Constitution...
...They don't enjoy the degradation of begging or the great amount of time it takes...
...Why should someone with $10 million have a bigger voice-a much bigger voice- than average citizens...
...Between them, these two clever sets of people will have little trouble figuring out how to let the former give and the latter take...
...But this principle can be balanced by the operation of a countervailing force, namely the democratic principle...
Vol. 124 • April 1997 • No. 7
