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Accumulate campaign dollars as I say, not as I do

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Also by Ryan Masse:

Public financing by way of semantics (April 24, 2008)
Scream it loud: 'We want roof gardens!' (April 17, 2008)
Mayor Dave rocking the suburbs (April 10, 2008)
Health care not in Constitution (March 27, 2008)

by Ryan Masse

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Arizona senator and presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain can trace his maverick reputation to a number of things, but perhaps most glaringly to his work with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., in the area of campaign finance reform. The two spearheaded the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which sought to eliminate soft money contributions to political parties and prevent groups from airing phony issue ads in the days leading up to an election.

The impetus for the unlikely McCain-Feingold pairing was a shared belief that private money played too large of a role in politics. “We all recognized one very simple truth — that campaign contributions from a single source that run to the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are not healthy to a democracy,” Mr. McCain said on the Senate floor shortly before the bill passed.

Given this history, there is quite a bit of irony in Mr. McCain’s announcement this week that he will not accept matching campaign funds from the government. The decision frees him to spend as much money as he wishes throughout the presidential primary election.

BCRA didn’t alter the public funding system (which was created in the 1970s), but if Mr. McCain is so concerned about the corrosive effect of money in politics, wouldn’t you expect him to lead by example and accept public financing? You’d think he would almost have to. But forced with the option of choosing between public funds tied to a spending limit or unlimited private cash, the senator opted for the latter.

In Mr. McCain’s defense, he’s not alone in failing to live up to his campaign finance rhetoric. Barack Obama, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, also says he supports public financing of elections. For instance, he is a co-sponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would establish a public financing system for U.S. Senate elections. Yet when it came time for the Illinois senator to decide whether to accept federal matching funds for his primary campaign, he too opted out in order to raise unlimited private donations.

Now bringing in almost $1 million per day, it’s nearly impossible to argue against Mr. Obama’s decision. Other major presidential candidates in recent elections, including Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Howard Dean, John Kerry and George W. Bush have made the same choice to forego matching funds in the primary election, and it’s safe to say none regretted the decision.

This is the folly of the public campaign financing system. No smart candidate, not even one supposedly committed to campaign finance reform, will voluntarily agree to limit his or her spending in exchange for public money if he or she could earn and spend more with private donations.

Hence, there are really only two ways to ensure a public financing system works. The first would be to make it coercive, to force candidates to take the funds and abide by the spending limits that come attached with the money. But this would be an unconstitutional infringement on candidates’ free speech rights, as the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo made clear. The second would be to set the public funds and spending limit so high as to make it nearly impossible to raise similar amounts from private sources.

The public financing scheme for the presidential general election actually has reflected this second scenario. Since the system’s inception in the 1970s, every presidential nominee from the two major parties has accepted public funds in the general election. They in turn agreed to not raise or spend private donations between the party’s nomination convention and Election Day. For each candidate, the public money has always just been too much to turn down.

It is starting to look as though 2008 will continue the trend, though only because of a poor decision on the part of Mr. Obama. Last March, he agreed with Mr. McCain that if the two won their parties’ respective nominations, they would both accept public financing in the general election. Mr. Obama would never make this deal today because he could earn far more from private sources than the $85 million that will be available to him from the government. If Mr. McCain holds the Illinois senator to the deal — and he’d be foolish not to — Mr. Obama will not be able to take advantage of his fundraising prowess in the general election. The two (assuming they win the nominations) would be on equal financial footing.

Future candidates will learn from Mr. Obama’s mistake. This election will be the last in which the presidential candidates accept money from the government in the general election.

Though some will lament the demise of the public financing system, it seems most taxpayers will not. Indeed, they are the ones who hastened the downfall. The system is funded entirely through people marking check-off boxes on tax returns, and fewer and fewer people are choosing to do so. They’ve recognized there are far better uses of taxpayer money than engaging in political speech — something private individuals and organizations are more than capable of creating themselves.

Ryan Masse (rmasse@badgerherald.com) is a first-year law student.

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Oliver Kiefer (February 14, 2008 @ 6:15am):

"But this would be an unconstitutional infringement on candidatesâ�� free speech rights, as the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo made clear"

As a law-student, I'm sure you have some insight on this case. My question is this: is free-speech violated if you make public financing optional?

I know that Maine and Arizona have a system in place that ensures equal footing for all qualified candidates. If one candidate gets a special interest ad run against them, the other gets a matching increase in their public financing.

In an era when Congressional leadership has literally passed out campaign checks from lobbyists on the floor of the US House of Representatives, don't you think the system has been corrupted?

To me, there are few better uses of taxpayer dollars than ensuring our elections are fair and that you don't have to be wealthy to run for office.

-Oliver Kiefer
College Dems of Madison

Anonymous (February 14, 2008 @ 2:22pm):

Perhaps an alternative source of funding for campaigns is a small tax on the media companies who are the primary beneficiaries of campaign expenditures.

Paul
The Moderate Voice Blog

Anonymous (February 14, 2008 @ 3:29pm):

Personally, I appreciate Big Pharma and Big Oil having huge sway over our elected officials. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? High energy costs and expensive health care, psshhhaw, not in a million years.

Moreover, when McCain-Feingold was created, Republicans were CRUSHING democrats for fund-raising. Now what? HA!

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