The End of the Party
BROOKS, DAVID
The End of the Party One consequence of campaign finance reform is clear:The parties lose. BY DAVID BROOKS One of the many virtues of the campaign finance reform debate was that it prompted a...
...Pick your poison...
...A distinctive feature of the campaign finance debate was the near-total absence from it of the party leaders, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle...
...they are quite impressive on another level...
...For, as opponent Mitch McConnell made clear in one of the best speeches of this or any recent Senate debate, the McCain-Feingold law is going to decimate the power of the political parties...
...The coverage of this debate was dominated by a series of story lines: McCain vs...
...It was a dumb amendment...
...He wiped a tear from his eye...
...Imagine somebody reading a menu, going through the appetizer section in a calm sweet voice, and then suddenly and for no apparent reason reading the entree options in a full rage, with spit flying and veins bulging...
...But in the next election cycle or two, before that happens, the current crop of reporters may have enormous influence on elections...
...It must have been truly boring, because Sen...
...That happened in the middle of Sen...
...The extremely senior senator from West Virginia has trains of thought that are as jagged and irregular as the landscape of his home state, and before anybody knew what was happening, Sen...
...Byrd, who stays awake through his own speeches, has demonstrated a high tolerance for tedium...
...ical, so it seems at least as likely that he was lured by one of Brynner's Cecil B. De Mille-type toga movies, such as Solomon and Sheba or even The Ten Commandments...
...So members of Congress will not pay as high a price for flouting party discipline...
...Senators will practically have to hire screenwriters to come up with dramatic story lines if they want to get TV and radio attention...
...Go behind any television station...
...No one could blame him for his confusion...
...McConnell...
...At least it's comforting to know that while politics may be a bog, and we may be on the verge of trading in an old bog for a new one, at least there are still impressive people who for some odd reason are willing to devote their lives to this messy business...
...I don't know...
...The parties are mostly funded by soft money, and without soft money, the party committees will be weak...
...This was in contrast to the Democratic floor manager, Chris Dodd, who operated under the principle that if an argument is worth making badly, it's worth making badly over and over again...
...Senator Lott especially seems to view the whole issue as if it were some sort of gross body organ that had inexplicably been tossed onto his dinner plate...
...But that's the kind of rhetoric it will take to get free coverage...
...Second, candidates will have to build up melodramatic story lines...
...So was Russ Fein-gold...
...Under McCain-Feingold—I'm assuming for purposes of this article that it won't be struck down in the courts, a huge assumption— they will spend less time as money whores and more time as media whores...
...The public as a whole is largely uninterested in the issue, but the big editorial pages covered it as if it were the invasion of Normandy...
...He represents his special interests very well...
...They and their campaign committees have huge pots of money they can commit to various projects and candidates at election time...
...That could mean an end to party discipline as we know it...
...It was a poorly crafted amendment...
...Hatch's collar...
...Then Sen...
...What's happening to me...
...But remember that as the Senate's self-appointed expert on ancient history, Byrd has a taste for things historDavid Brooks is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He wore a startled and quizzical expression, as if to say, "How did I get onto this...
...Senator Hatch started crying...
...What am I doing here...
...The debate on it was merely a harbinger of things to come...
...I pay tribute to Sen...
...It was open, free-flowing, and unpredictable...
...So was Fred Thompson...
...McCain does, flattering journalists and reporters and less time catering to lobbyists...
...This was the most emotional male hug since La Cage aux folles, and really a more graphic display of Sen...
...But historians will be transfixed by the question, Which Yul Brynner film was it that managed to draw Sen...
...Hatch sees himself as a tough fighter...
...Either it won't go into politics, or, more likely, it will be funneled into politics through different channels...
...But that money will be gone...
...I wish we had someone on our side who could do that," said Hatch, his insults scaled down to the backhand variety...
...First he misquoted Newton Minow's comment that television was a "vast wasteland," then he deepened his critique, likening TV to the Cambodian holocaust: "Television has become a killing field...
...Kennedy, whose jowls were buffed to an impressive shine that morning, started spewing vitriol at the suggestion made by the senator from Utah...
...I can scarcely remember seeing as one-sided a debate as the one that preceded the vote on "non-severability" (whether the whole bill should be voided if any part is struck down by the courts...
...for a second it looked like there might be some Chappaquiddick reference coming round the bend...
...But it will also have a more immediate and profound effect...
...Byrd's train of thought jumped another track and he offered the Senate his cinematic tastes...
...They will have to spend more time, as Sen...
...So the discussion was not scripted from the top...
...And in that, it was a precursor of the way politics will be if this bill does become law...
...That will probably push politics in a slightly liberal direction, and could outweigh the influence of the parts of the bill, such as the raising of the hard money limits, that favor Republicans and conservatives...
...I love the senator as few in this body do," Hatch continued...
...That really starched Sen...
...John Edwards of North Carolina was smart...
...Many instinctively reached for their sick bags...
...Two things are sure: This law will change the rules, and people who are desperate to be politicians will continue to do whatever it takes to get and keep their jobs...
...Right now, the parties are like Hollywood studios...
...A killing field, because the people who run the television stations, the networks and local broadcasters, have forgotten the bottom line: their responsibility to the American people...
...He has lived in Washington for 49 years, he said, but in all that time, he has seen only one movie...
...Under the current system, politicians spend huge amounts of time being money whores...
...But it is exactly the sort of Moment of S— (as the screenwriters call it) that can get you on the evening news...
...It was an evil amendment...
...And, while the campaign finance debate was generally intelligent and substantive, it included some scary foreshadowings...
...Probably better off...
...Because with the likely passage of campaign finance reform, American politics is truly entering a new phase...
...It's hard to say right now whether the pre-McCain-Feingold world or the post-McCain-Feingold world is better for democracy...
...I don't need lectures from the distinguished senator from Massachusetts," Hatch bellowed a few times...
...The media played a huge role in pushing this issue onto the agenda...
...Byrd into the movie theater in the first place...
...Kennedy...
...If free media become more important than paid media, then candidates will have to get even better at attracting free media attention...
...As Tucker Carlson noted that evening on The Spin Room, Durbin could be accused of exaggeration: "A killing field...
...Hatch and Kennedy are actually close friends, and Hatch's anger was subsiding quickly...
...Hatch is pretty white...
...He was going to stick it to the spoiled rich boy...
...It was a Yul Brynner film, and Byrd was so bored he walked out in the middle...
...Byrd noted, it contains no sex...
...Politicians whose lives are extended soap operas, like the Clintons and the Kennedys, will have a huge advantage...
...For example, Illinois senator Dick Durbin rose one day to talk about the stakes involved...
...Throughout the debate Sen...
...For all its egomaniacal digressions and sitcom moments, the campaign finance debate was conducted at quite a high level...
...Kennedy can stride) and gave Sen...
...That too is a precursor of things to come...
...All of a sudden, a storm came down from the mountains, and Sen...
...The party leaders are often hacks, subservient to corporate interests, who try to impose a mind-numbing uniformity on the parties...
...Then Sen...
...Another notable feature of the campaign finance reform debate was the deafening cheerleading by the media...
...At one point senator Ted Kennedy rose to condemn something called the Hatch Amendment, the substance of which has been lost in the sands of time...
...For this law gives the media awesome power...
...Strangely enough, while these people may be inexplicable freaks on one level (who would want to live that way...
...In the latter, Brynner played the pharaoh Rameses, who went in for massive construction projects, just like Sen...
...Some of the best speeches were made by people who do not have the best reputations...
...Kennedy's speech in opposition to the Hatch Amendment...
...It was not only a misguided amendment...
...After a few minutes, Byrd looked up from his little disquisition on the merits and demerits of movies versus public television...
...Is that good or bad...
...Now, it would be a mistake to romanticize the current situation and make the forthcoming change in our politics out to be some sort of fall from grace...
...The candidates themselves will be able to mention their own names, and journalists will be allowed to mention them (as will guests the journalists invite onto their programs...
...It appeals to the undervalued 82-86-year-old demographic, and, as Sen...
...The decline of the party apparatchiks is not necessarily a terrible thing...
...In the last 60 days before an election, only two groups will be allowed to mention the names of candidates on radio and TV without restriction...
...Kennedy's private side than many of us want to see...
...Moreover, the declining importance of soft money donors and the rising importance of the people who control free media is not necessarily a dreadful development either...
...BY DAVID BROOKS One of the many virtues of the campaign finance reform debate was that it prompted a national reevaluation of the film career of Yul Brynner...
...Many will guess it must have been The King and I, Brynner's signature role...
...First, they'll have to get more hysterical...
...For example, New Jersey's Robert Torricelli, who's famous for dating Bianca Jagger and being the subject of a growing fund-raising scandal, gave a series of extremely intelligent speeches...
...Byrd...
...Hatch a hug right in the middle of his speech...
...So was Mike DeWine...
...Kennedy strode across the floor (to the extent that Sen...
...The debaters in favor of non-severability crushed their opponents, if you judged strictly on debating points, and yet the amendment lost...
...Every time Mitch McConnell rose he had a new bit of argument or information to share with his colleagues...
...There was a perfect little soap opera moment during last week's debate that illustrated the sorts of sitcom-like episodes we'll be seeing more of...
...Robert Byrd got this going when he rose on the floor of the Senate to discuss the vulgarity of political ads on TV...
...They often spend several hours a day hitting up big donors...
...Eventually, that could mean that big business groups, labor unions, and interest groups will buy up media properties and manipulate them to support their agendas...
...We will see weird cross-party alliances, exactly as we did throughout the campaign finance saga...
...Bush, the relationship between McCain and Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, the supposed villainy of Sen...
...He may look like a goody-goody, but he actually came up from nothing and had to fight for everything he's achieved...
...Kennedy, like his liberal neighbor Paul Well-stone, displayed an ability to work himself into fits of high rhetorical fervor that were completely unrelated to the words that were coming out of his mouth...
...The good arguments didn't always win...
...If the only people who can freely express themselves are the owners of newspapers and broadcast stations, then it makes sense to buy a newspaper or a station to get your ideas out...
...On the other hand, party governance does have its uses, as everybody since Edmund Burke has pointed out, and a Congress full of freelancers could be a disaster...
...Byrd was discussing his favorite TV program, which is a BBC sitcom that runs on PBS called Keeping Up Appearances...
...He too was moved to offer his opinion of the quality of television programming...
...If you are a union leader, or a business leader, or a member of an interest group such as the NRA or the ACLU, it will be extremely difficult—and in many cases illegal—for you to take out ads mentioning candidates' names or showing their faces...
...Will the Democratic party be better or worse off if Terry McAuliffe has less influence...
...He rose to respond, his face white with rage (which for Sen...
...But he couldn't keep it up...
...Big pile of skulls...
Vol. 6 • April 2001 • No. 29
