You Won't Even Read This Article!
MAYER, WILLIAM G.
You Won't Even Read This Article! That's how little Americans care about campaign finance reform. BY WILLIAM G. MAYER WHAT DOES THE American public think about campaign finance reform? Actually,...
...Actually, it doesn't think much about it at all...
...Remarkably enough, Taylor apparently sees nothing even mildly troubling about this...
...In January 2000, Gallup asked respondents to assess the importance of 25 issues, including education, health care, taxes, poverty, crime, race relations, foreign trade, and even "presidential character...
...Remarkably, "campaign finance reform" ranked 24 th on the list...
...Clearly what is needed are questions that measure the relative importance of campaign finance as compared to other issues...
...But one common explanation had it that Bush won only because he used "manufactured issues"—the Massachusetts furlough program, the pledge of allegiance and flag-burning controver-sies—that had not been on the public's radar screen before...
...I am not, I should make clear, a supporter of the civic journalism movement...
...But as a simple matter of accuracy and context, any media stories about Granny D should have noted that the extraordinary importance she attached to the campaign finance issue was, in fact, not shared by the vast majority of Americans who don't write editorials for a living...
...The American media, of course, take a very different perspective on this matter...
...So far as I can tell, 1994 was the only year when "campaign finance reform" was included in this list—and even though respondents were allowed to check off two different issues, only 4 percent cited campaign finance...
...In 31 separate polls conducted over the last eight years, the largest number of Americans to mention "campaign finance" was 3 percent...
...If you simply ask Americans whether campaign finance is "important" or should be "a high priority" for Congress, a sizable number (though not a majority) will say that it is...
...Many news organizations, even ones that weren't associated with the civic journalism movement, embraced the idea...
...Only 4 percent said campaign finance...
...This trend goes back to the 1988 presidential campaign, when a substantial part of the media was outraged by George Bush's victory, though they could never explain what exactly made Bush's campaign so immoral...
...In 1998, a Market Strategies question offered a different list of issues— tax reform, health care reform, campaign finance reform, and Social Security—and asked which was "the most important to address right now...
...at the Washington Post, we are trying to let the voters' agenda set our coverage agenda...
...According to Paul Taylor, a former reporter and finance-reform enthusiast who now heads a group called the Alliance for Better Campaigns, the New York Times and Washington Post together have published more than 80 editorials on campaign finance reform in 2001 alone, plus another 80 or so op-ed pieces or let-ters-to-the-editor on the subject...
...And whenever questions take this form, campaign finance winds up near the bottom of the list...
...The American media, predictably, found her story irresistible, and gave her a great deal of highly favorable coverage, generally portraying her as the point person for a huge grass-roots movement—even though there is some evidence that she undertook her expedition precisely because expressions of mass enthusiasm were not forthcoming...
...Most likely, she would have been either ignored or dismissed as a flake...
...Though the details varied, most proposals called on the media to use some combination of surveys and less-structured interviews to develop a list of issues that were "important to the voters"—and then to demand that the candidates address these issues, whether they wanted to or not...
...According to the standards of civic journalism, it was particularly unconscionable that campaign finance was placed so high on the Senate's agenda this year, ahead of education, health care, Social Security, and all the other issues that are considerably more important to the average voter...
...the only issue it beat was "policy concerning gays and lesbians...
...In most surveys, it winds up as an asterisk (i.e., the issue is mentioned by less than half a percent of all respondents...
...In a similar vein, the Harris poll regularly asks its samples, "What do you think are the two most important issues for the government to address...
...No matter how often the nation's editorialists lecture them on the issue, the American public consistently says they'd prefer that Congress and the president move on to other matters...
...Alternatively, I'd settle for a series of articles by former civic journalists admitting that their earlier writings were wrong or simplistic, and promising not to criticize anyone else for talking about issues that don't rate high in the polls...
...Instead, a great deal of reporting and commentary on campaign finance suggests that ordinary Americans are as consumed with the issue as the press is...
...typical survey respondent...
...But it is reasonable to hope that the media would recognize that their own obsession with campaign finance is not shared by most Americans and then take that into account when they report on the issue...
...What makes all this so noteworthy is that for almost 15 years the press has frequently criticized conservatives and Republicans for pursuing issues that allegedly aren't ranked high among the public's priorities...
...Take the case of Doris Haddock, aka "Granny D," the 91-year-old political activist who walked across the United States in 1999 to drum up support for campaign finance reform...
...Forty-two percent said crime, 32 percent chose education, and 19 percent said the economy...
...Did the 2000 campaign—in particular, John McCain's candidacy—elevate the importance of campaign finance in the public mind...
...Eventually, a whole series of proposals and experiments emerged, often lumped together under the rubric of "civic journalism," which urged the media to play a much more active role in dictating the agenda of American election campaigns...
...But how would Haddock have been treated if she had marched for a cause less treasured by media elites— say, the pro-life side of the abortion issue...
...How many Americans, for example, would deny that world hunger is "important"—yet how many actually give the issue any weight when deciding how to vote...
...Presidential character, supposedly despised by the voters, actually was ranked number eight...
...Not a chance: In January 2001, Gallup presented respondents with a list of 14 possible goals for the new administration, and asked what priority each goal should have...
...All told, it ranked eighth of nine issues, well behind crime, the economy, family values, and abortion, and just one percentage point ahead of "foreign trade/NAFTA...
...Election Day exit polls typically offer voters a list of issues and then ask which one or two mattered most when they decided how to vote...
...His article "Public Attitudes on Campaign Finance" has just been published in A User's Guide to Campaign Finance Reform (Rowman & LittleGeld...
...Not having been born yesterday, I don't expect most major media outlets to begin openly confessing their errors and inconsistencies...
...As Taylor put it, even though this issue "doesn't evoke deep passions among the public, it has an unyielding grip on the imagination of the nation's elites—starting with that rarefied precinct known as the newspaper editorial board room...
...This time, "improving the way political campaigns are financed" ranked last...
...But as a matter of simple consistency, I keep waiting for all these civic journalism proponents to write even one article taking McCain, Feingold, et al...
...The Gallup poll's results ought to be definitive...
...As the Charlotte Observer declared in a frontpage editorial launching its coverage of the 1992 campaign, "We'll Help You Regain Control of the Issues...
...But the more one examines these data, the more it becomes apparent that questions of this type set a low and undemanding threshold for the William G. Mayer is an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University...
...Though it is rarely mentioned in the typical media story on the subject, campaign finance reform is the epitome of a "Beltway issue": one that greatly concerns pundits, reporters, editors, and (at least some) interest-group leaders and elected officials, but simply doesn't strike the average American as all that important...
...One of its sharpest early critics, for example, was Leonard Down-ie, the executive editor of the Washington Post...
...It is all too easy to say that an issue is "important" even though one may not have invested any real interest or effort in it...
...In my view, proposals of this sort greatly underestimate the complexity of determining what the public thinks and cares about, and undervalue the importance of political leadership...
...I had heard this charge made many times by opponents of the McCain-Feingold bill...
...Never having met Granny D, I assume that she is a decent and well-meaning person, and I applaud her dedication and commitment...
...Yet David Broder, whose fairness and integrity are legendary in the Washington press corps, described that paper's intentions for the 1992 campaign by saying, "We need to show our respect for our readers by taking their concerns seriously...
...In 1997, for example, a CBS/New York Times poll asked respondents which of four issues—the economy, education, campaign finance, or crime—was "most important right now...
...Again, campaign finance finished dead last, and by a substantial margin: 33 percent said health care, 27 percent Social Security, 26 percent tax reform, 7 percent campaign finance...
...In fairness, there are a few questions that, if considered in isolation, seem to point to the opposite conclusion...
...to task for harping on an issue that the public obviously doesn't care about...
...But it wasn't until I took a closer look at public opinion about campaign finance reform for a just-published academic book on the subject that I realized how strong the evidence is on this point...
Vol. 7 • September 2001 • No. 1
