A Surfeit of Cash
GLASS, ANDREW J.
A Surfeit of Cash The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why By Elizabeth Drew Birch Lane. 256pp. $21.95. Reviewed by Andrew J. Glass Senior correspondent and columnist,...
...A manifestation of the phenomenon Drew describes was evident in the extraordinary coverage of JFK Jr.'s accidental death...
...As Elizabeth Drew notes in her new book, it is where "law and policy are made on taxes, medical care, the quality of our air and water, Social Security, national defense, foreign involvements, the safety of airplanes, abortion, securities regulations, the release of new drugs, gun control, the soundness of our banks, disaster relief, continuing education and training," and many other things...
...Participation has registered an unbroken downward line since 1980...
...Even the normally clear-eyed Drew, who covered the capital in the early 1960s for Max Ascoli's now-defunct Reporter magazine, waxes nostalgic over that brief heady season...
...His approach toward the media elite was one he shared with his late mother, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and with the father whose famous name he bore...
...In her zest for reform, there is a question Drew does not ask: After Clinton's failed attempt to don the JFK mantle, who out there possesses an easy style on the stump that reminds people of (take your pick) a Kennedy or a Reagan...
...In the 1998 midterm elections, with Presidential impeachment in the wind, overall participation fell to 36 per cent...
...Where Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona seeks the Presidency by promising to restore tattered public confidence in the campaign finance process, George W would get to the same place by being a nice guy: a "compassionate conservative" who wants you to know he's on your side...
...I think it's legitimate," Bush said a few months prior to becoming the $37 million man and completely losing interest in the Federal quid pro quo...
...Four Presidents later Ronald Reagan, the oldest man ever to be elected to the office, would privately voice his admiration for the youngest man to win the position...
...It now hovers at around 12 per cent...
...All the same, since his death in 1963 at age 46, JFK has been ranked in popular surveys as one of our greatest Presidents, perhaps because he was the last of our country's leaders to make people feel good about public service...
...Most of that reflects two trends as similar as peas in a pod: diminishing public interest in the political process, if not in political celebrities, and falling public confidence in government...
...Even the cable networks that specialize in political news intend to duck gavel-to-gavel coverage...
...That does not worry Texas Governor George W Bush...
...The answer may hold little comfort for Kennedy liberals or Reagan conservatives...
...And now...
...They used to have people run who had had some experience, were grounded in some issues...
...Those dreary statistics are reflected as well in the number of taxpayers who choose to fund Presidential campaigns through their annual returns...
...According to Drew, a veteran Washington correspondent, the political train left the tracks about a decade ago, when Presidential candidates began to find ways to get around the Campaign Finance Act of 1974 that established the currently embattled checkoff system...
...Since the checkoff plan draws virtually no favorable publicity from its intended beneficiaries, it is little wonder that some tax filers wrongly believe they are opting out of an extra $3 payment, rather than electing not to earmark that money...
...As we have seen in the recent legislative battles that Drew ably chronicles, however, Congressional incumbents are in no mood to change a system that practically guarantees them employment— short, perhaps, of their being caught in bed with a dead girl or live boy...
...instead, they will seek to outflank one another by offering their own branded reports...
...And even if by some quirk of fate reformers were to gain the upper hand on Capitol Hill, their probable actions run a high risk of being held unconstitutional...
...Engendering this spirit was one of John F. Kennedy's most important contributions...
...And then if you can get enough money and keep the pollster or get another one, you go to the Senate, whether [or not] you've accomplished anything...
...There was a time," she writes, "when people came to Washington out of a spirit of public service and idealism...
...President Bill Clinton has managed to cage the Congressional Republicans—without handing Gore the keys to the zoo...
...Nevertheless, fewer and fewer Americans have any real say over these and other important policy decisions...
...All the same, entering the White House after a bad patch, he made many Americans feel good about their country...
...But it is George W Bush, whose idea of a good time is to ask his pal, the cigar-smoking mystery writer and country folk singer Kinky "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" Friedman to join him at University of Texas Longhorn basketball games in Austin...
...Reviewed by Andrew J. Glass Senior correspondent and columnist, Cox Newspapers If the Presidential nominees are known before the national political conventions are held—as has pretty much been the reality since 1952—the major television networks will virtually ignore the events...
...Of course, Vice President Al Gore, Bush's presumed Democratic rival, could note that there is no controlling legal authority compelling him to accept a Federal subsidy either, but he will...
...The kind of legislation Drew urges, effectively requiring groups that engage in issue advocacy to register and report— along the same lines as political action committees—would therefore soon be crushed in the courts...
...Those rights remain absolute—unless, in the case of Presidential aspirants, they are voluntarily waived to receive public financing...
...While the Bush and Gore campaigns are well funded, the moral tide, as Drew observes, continues to ebb...
...He is waiving Federal campaign matching funds next year to avoid being shackled by spending limits in contested primary states...
...But Washington is not a pea plant...
...The 2000 campaign promises to revolve around twin axes—Clinton's relative policy successes in the White House and the Republicans' relative inability to bring him to account for his personal failings...
...if you have got the money to hire a pollster, whether you've done anything in life or not, you can get into the House, maybe...
...To set matters straight, Drew believes Congress must close the soft money loophole and choke off the funds candidates would otherwise be unable to raise...
...To be sure, Reagan also would go out of his way to trash public servants, on whose shoulders he laid many of the nation's ills...
...It promises to be an election that the young Kennedy would undoubtedly have savored and that Drew will no doubt find many good reasons to deplore...
...According to the handcuffed Federal Election Commission, the $200 million diverted through checkoffs between 1997 and 1999 will be sufficient to cover next year's conventions and general election...
...The quality of the politicians has gone down," Drew told CNN's Judy Woodruff recently...
...If you define insiders as those who regularly contribute S250 or more to political campaigns, you are talking about no more than one-half of 1 per cent of the adult population...
...There is no national holiday to remember the father...
...What is more, current judicial rules grant both individuals and organizations an unchallenged right to spend unlimited amounts of their money to encourage the victory or the defeat of any candidate so long as there is no proven coordination...
...Drew's minute dissection of the failure of campaign finance reform is suffused with her contempt for many of today's dominant political personalities, including Clinton, and for the poll-driven, celebrity-focused culture in which they have thrived...
...It would almost certainly have given him lateral access to a Senate seat if at some point he opted for politics, and ultimately to a dynastic quest for the Presidency...
...That was the lowest since 1942, amid World War II...
...The post-Watergate laws Drew finds quite acceptable were undermined when the Supreme Court ruled that candidates enjoy a First Amendment right to spend as much as they want of their own money to advance theirpolitical ambitions...
...The Republicans will likely turn to Bush not because he is a paragon of virtue, but because their own stab at righteous rectitude has proved to be such a bust...
...In mixing it up with the likes of Friedman (the author of The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, a saga recently translated into Hebrew and Japanese), Bush the Younger display's the kind of relaxed style that Kennedy the Younger showcased in George, founded by him to celebrate both politics as such and the particular politics of celebrityhood...
...For the first time, though, it projects a shortfall in matching funds for the Presidential primaries...
...This time around, too, the conventions will probably be without the high-wattage George magazine parties, centered as they were around the late John F. Kennedy Jr...
...While the young Kennedy was not a candidate, his modest bearing and populist manners belied an elaborate web of personal alliances he had forged with key people in the journalism and publishing worlds...
...That's why both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan are likely to continue to confound carping revisionist historians...
...More broadly, the 1996 Presidential election, by far the most costly in U. S. history, registered the lowest percentage turnout in 72 years...
Vol. 82 • August 1999 • No. 9
