Monday, October 20, 2008
Thirty-six years after CREEP, campaign finance regulation is dead
In 1972, Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President raised what was then a scandalous $60 million dollars, equivalent to a bit more than $300 million today. Some of this cash gusher was used to commit crimes, and in the years since Watergate the press and most of the chattering classes have thought that money was such a corrosive influence on politics that it ought to be regulated. Over the objections of many conservatives (including me, by the way), John McCain has been one of the leading proponents of that regulation, and virtually all mainstream media editorialists lionized him for this, at least back before he was running against Barack Obama.
This morning, the headlines are that Barack Obama raised $150,000,000 -- half of Richard Nixon's total in constant dollars -- in September alone. Since the beginning of the campaign Obama has raised $605 million, or just under twice Richard Nixon's massive war chest. The consequence is that Barack Obama has an effectively unlimited television advertising budget. On NPR this morning an analyst was heard to say that this was the first time a presidential campaign might actually reach the point of diminishing returns on advertising expenditures.
Under normal circumstances -- such as would prevail if a Republican raised money in these amounts -- we would expect endless and tiresome harrumphing about "money politics" and the like, with aggressive calls for new regulation. Well, this time the silence of the media and the Democrats is deafening, and their credibility on this subject is forever destroyed. Never again in my lifetime, at least, will any serious Democrat (meaning Democrats other than those with gerry-mandered safe seats in the House of Representatives) call for campaign finance reform. Regulation of campaign contributions is dead, and Barack Obama killed it.
That, at least, is a blessing both for freedom of speech and for Republicans in the next election. We look for our silver linings wherever we can find them.
MORE: When you have virtually unlimited campaign cash, do you use some of it to hire private detectives to look into your opponent's wife? Hope and change!
9 Comments:
By 
smitty1e, at
Mon Oct 20, 07:45:00 AM:
I would have some kind of non-partisan, 100% transparent accounting fishbowl through which all campaign finance must flow. No limits, do what you want, but understand that public office is chess, not poker. Exceptions will breed abuse.
Were the origins of all the cash transparent, then I daresay the polls would like shockingly different.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Oct 20, 08:09:00 AM:
I agree. I would allow for unlimited contributions, with detailed web-based disclosure from contributors in a searcheable format. We have some of that now, but I would have more, including disclosure of the ultimate parent entity of the contributor's employer and his or her spouse's employer.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Oct 20, 09:52:00 AM:
Just because so much money is raised, does not mean the Dems will stop trying to regulate Free Speach, after all, their goal is the same kind of 99% elections as many Third World nations get.
I would go for what TH proposes, but with one cavet: You cannot spend money that has not been reported, i.e. until you get the contribution listed on your web site with *all* the associated information, you cannot spend one dime of that check, or use it as collateral for a loan. After all, we will not know much of the "O" contributions until after the dust has settled.
I, for one, look forward to our new (fill in the blank) overlords...
By 
, at
Mon Oct 20, 12:23:00 PM:
With so much cash, he can easily afford to pay off Hillary's debts in exchange to have Bill and Hill as handpuppets for the glory and wonder of an Obama administration.
It's a ton of dough, and clearly gives him an advantage of innundating the public.
As long as it doesn't overexpose, it makes beating him very difficult.
By honestpartisan, at
Mon Oct 20, 04:17:00 PM:
The problem with this is that everyone complains about campaign finance, but, like dependence on foreign oil, the remedy depends on what your real beef is. My real problem -- and, I suspect, most people on the left as well -- with campaign finance is that it amounts to legal bribery. Donor X gives money to a candidate and gets a good legislative result, or at least influence, in return. In light of this, comparisons of Obama's haul to Nixon's are a non sequitur. Donors of less than $100, of whom Obama's contributors consist, are not going to get any influence or favors because their donation. If you or others think that there are donors who may be unduly influential, then get evidence of that, which is separate from the dollar amount Obama's raised.
By , at
Mon Oct 20, 08:17:00 PM:
I am primarily in agreement with honestpartisan. As a note on the 'fishbowl' solution: running down the ultimate originator of a donation could probably be made next to impossible, or prohibitively expensive, through the judicious use of shell companies and boards of directors that take orders from pseudoanonymized shareholders. This problem may be best exemplified in PACs; one need not donate directly to a candidate in order to act on his or her behalf, and a determination of what 'acting on behalf' is to determine fishbowl inclusion/exclusion sounds difficult at best.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Oct 20, 09:13:00 PM:
I am sure, honestpartisan, that you are sincere in your beliefs. I believe, however, that the prevalent view of the left in the Watergate days was to prevent abuses in the spending of campaign cash, which has nothing to do with individual donor size. Back then, both parties raised lots of money from large individual donors, but Nixon raised so much in the aggregate that he had all sorts of extra money to waste on the Plumbers and such. That was the big outrage of the time.
By honestpartisan, at
Mon Oct 20, 11:29:00 PM:
I am sure, honestpartisan, that you are sincere in your beliefs. I believe, however, that the prevalent view of the left in the Watergate days was to prevent abuses in the spending of campaign cash, which has nothing to do with individual donor size.
Thanks for the faith. My view isn't original. Here's an appearance by Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen, a big campaign-finance reform advocate, from Jim Lehrer earlier this year making the same point, which is what I've generally heard from other of her ilk.
By Mr.Hengist, at
Wed Oct 22, 12:05:00 PM:
"Never again in my lifetime, at least, will any serious Democrat (meaning Democrats other than those with gerry-mandered safe seats in the House of Representatives) call for campaign finance reform. Regulation of campaign contributions is dead, and Barack Obama killed it."
I'm not sure what you mean by "serious Democrat" - and I'm not sure that isn't an oxymoron - but I'll say this: Campaign Finance Reform is dead only in this election cycle. As soon as the tables are turned and the Republican POTUS candidate has raised more money than her Democrat counterpart, we can be sure that the Dems will go right back to the complaints we've heard in the last election cycles. They'll stand on this principle once again, as they always do, and their principles will have changed according to their circumstances, as they always do. Tigerhawk, I think you're assuming that they would never be so audacious as to invite accusations of glaring hypocrisy on this matter, and I think that assertion doesn't pass the Laugh Test.
