Beating the High Price of Politics
FRANK, REUVEN
BEATING THE HIGH PRICE OF POLITICS BY REUVEN FRANK Over the years it has become very American to argue violently about whether or not some policy should be adopted that in fact is already general...
...He is spending out of his past rather than investing in his future...
...So a producer of defense goods has no income he did not receive from the government...
...And if the majority is found to believe in buying fewer defense goods, the company manufacturing them should award a larger sum to the candidate on the voters' side than to the one on its side...
...Governments, like companies, are not abstractions...
...The motorists were not asked if they preferred Nixon, or George McGovern, or John G. Schmitz...
...There would be all sorts of advantages to this approach...
...Yet none of the schemes so far set forth would funnel funds directly to the candidate of one's choice...
...If a defense contractor were to contribute to the candidate who wanted to buy more armaments—and even without any evidence it seems logical to postulate a certain temptation —but not to the candidate who wanted to get along pretty much with what we have, at least until it rusts, then he would be distributing the public's money in a way it might not necessarily approve of...
...Repeal of Prohibition is a good early example, abortion on demand a more recent one (even when they were illegal, as we all know, very few abortions were performed on women who didn't ask for them...
...The best current example concerns public financing of political campaigns...
...Cui malo...
...Corporations, like public servants, do not spend their own money...
...The gasoline company is not an abstract entity sitting on a barrel of money, doling it out at will: some for you and some for ye, and some for thou and some for thee, and some for President Nixon...
...Aha!, proponents of public financing exclaim, there's the rub...
...Nor is their money parthenogenetic: It comes from taxes, taxes come from taxpayers, and taxpayers are the public...
...He has been through the hard knocks and the rat race and wants a little ceremony, some titled guests for his wife to hostess, an interesting address and crested stationery...
...Papua might go for $165,000 on the Republican's list and only $88,000 on the Democrat's, that being the difference between their budgets...
...But it is unfair and inaccurate to lump in the same category the man who will dig into his savings so he can be an ambassador for a while and be called "Your Excellency" in his country club locker room when he returns from his tour abroad...
...There is so little harm an ambassador can do that it cannot conceivably outweigh the good that would be done by finally taking the burden of funding campaigns off the public...
...But the matter does not end there...
...Though this is universally regarded as a very bad thing, financing campaigns from the sale of ambassadorships to the wealthy may in fact be the most sensible solution to the present controversy...
...Reuven Frank, a previous contributor to these pages, is currently Senior Executive Producer of NBC News...
...If an arms maker gives to a political campaign, therefore, he is contributing public money...
...Yet a man who could afford it and wanted to be the United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Papua might conclude that the Republican had the better chance of winning and decide to pay the higher figure...
...Thus the dairymen will, in effect, get their contribution back, but it will not be passed on to the consumer...
...There seems to be little point in debating this issue because the public has always paid for political campaigns...
...Accordingly, the price it charges includes the cost of its political contributions, and is paid by motorists—not by the executives who make the corporate decisions, or "the company...
...he has already acquired his wealth, at the public expense or elsewhere...
...In reality, however, there is no such thing as corporate financing of campaigns...
...Meanwhile, too little attention is being directed to the time-honored tradition of people paying candidates for the privilege of becoming ambassadors...
...If their expenses include donations to political candidates, that is figured into the prices they charge...
...The business of a gasoline company is to sell gasoline...
...But that is usually the situation before official action catches up with unofficial practice...
...They, in turn, would be free of having to preside over Fourth of July weenie roasts and waste their precious, professional evenings in the company of titled bores their wives saw fit to invite to embassy dinners...
...True, the gain in efficiency might be counterbalanced to some degree by the expense of a bureaucracy, but no opponent of such a plan has explained how we might otherwise stop corporations from passing the cost of political contributions on to the consumer in the form of higher prices, or how to prevent government contractors from spending the tax money they are paid by the government on donations to candidates...
...Voters, too, tend to look askance at the proposal...
...Or he might hedge his bet by paying both candidates...
...Motorists are the public, or a big hunk of it, and if we are to believe the courts, they gave a lot of money—or a lot of their money was given—to the Nixon reelection committee in 1972...
...Those who favor public financing of political campaigns contend that it would put an end to illegal corporate contributions...
...it is the parties that would be the beneficiaries...
...Rather, they serve as conduits, charging a sufficient price for their products to recover their costs and provide a profit to their stockholders...
...BEATING THE HIGH PRICE OF POLITICS BY REUVEN FRANK Over the years it has become very American to argue violently about whether or not some policy should be adopted that in fact is already general practice...
...What is most important, at home the sale of ambassadorships would relieve the American public of the escalating burden of financing political campaigns...
...Among the contributors of substantial sums to campaigns, he is an innocent, a benignity, a pussycat...
...It would be to the whole country's benefit if each major Presidential candidate, upon nomination, drew up a firm campaign budget and then allocated prices for the various embassies representing this country overseas so that the total equaled his projected expenditures...
...Let us say that a gasoline company supports a Presidential candidate (the courts have recently dealt with a few who did...
...In this instance, though, there may be an easy solution...
...What donor of the public's money to a political candidate has asked for so little...
...It would also end the dumb argument over whether or not to adopt as a new policy something that has always existed...
...The statutes of limitations have drawn a curtain over how he accumulated his fortune in the first place...
...Then there is a third case, represented by the dairy industry, whose political contributions come out of what the public pays for milk...
...On the other hand, official action implies the introduction of a bureaucracy, hardly an automatic guarantee of greater efficiency...
...and the government has no revenues it did not collect from the public...
...Nevertheless, some senators and congressmen oppose a formal system of public financing of campaigns on the ground that it would rob the individual voter of his initiative in the matter...
...After all is said and done, what they are actually arguing about is who should pay for the $25-a-plate dinners...
...Not long ago it became a matter of record that a producer of defense goods gave money to a political campaign (it would be unfair, of course, to assume without proof that more of this goes on than has been discovered in the courts...
...Economists call this a monopsony, and young thirsters after truth are told the condition is very rare, the major monopsonists being defense contractors who sell only to governments...
...Since the only kind of money the arms maker has to spend is the public's, perhaps he could be required to commission an opinion poll to determine what the people want him to do with it...
...The typical seeker after an ambassadorship is not attempting to acquire his wealth at the public expense...
...When daily farmers back a specific candidate in order to guarantee an increase in the price of milk, it can be considered that they are merely insuring a reasonable, or even more than reasonable, return on their investment...
...And so, in the Halls of the Mighty and at the American crossroads the issue rouses emotion, disagreement and heated debate...
...Yes, John G. Schmitz, 1972 Presidential standard bearer of the American party...
...A person who gives money to a mayoral candidate because he wants to be appointed tax collector, or a banker whose contributions are intended to guarantee that public accounts will be deposited in his bank without requiring him to pay interest, is properly condemned for trying to profit from his political philanthropy...
...That brings us to a narrower case...
...If an arms maker gives $50,000 to the reelection campaign of a Presidential candidate, could it not advise the 2,000 workers in its cafeteria on a specified day that they are eating a $25-a-plate company lunch...
...In short, the public pays...
...If you ask the man on the street, he will probably tell you he is danged if he can see why any of his hard-earned money should go to one of them rascals, as he goes off to pay 65 cents for a loaf of soft white bread...
...Suppose for a moment—there is no evidence this has happened—that one candidate for a high office thinks we need a lot more defense goods, while his opponent thinks we need less, says the weapons we buy cost too much, promises to do something about it, and spouts all the demagoguery we have been hearing lately from people who hate military parades...
...If the financing of political campaigns—which, as we have seen, has long been borne by the public —were to be made an open system organized through a law, the only real difference would be practical: All the money the public gave to finance political campaigns would go to finance political campaigns...
...Armaments manufacturers have only one customer: the government...
...Not very efficiently, to be sure—and perhaps some changes are necessary...
...Diplomatic negotiations, for example, would be handled exclusively by Foreign Service specialists sent forth from Washington, who would have their instructions straight and be where the talking was by overnight plane...
Vol. 57 • August 1974 • No. 16
