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Of Democrats, Money, Good Government and Freedom
Published on February 5, 2009
Category: Contributions & Limits, Other, Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Mark Schmitt is an old line campaign finance "reformer" who has, in recent years, slowly been coming to the recognition that maybe money in politics ain't all bad. He's recently written this column for the American Prospect, in which he suggests that reformers (such as he) need to rethink some of their old positions.
"The election created a paradox [for the "reform" community]," writes Schmitt. "If there were a causal relationship between big money in politics and corruption, public cynicism, and low participation, then a year like 2008 -- which featured big money but also public enthusiasm and high participation -- should not exist."
He goes on to argue that, "The challenge in the next wave of reform is not to try to rebuild the post-Watergate campaign-finance regulations but instead to see money as one factor in a larger system and intervene to turn money into a force for good (participation, robust communication) rather than for ill (corruption, massive inequality in the ability of candidates to be heard)."
We're glad to see Schmitt rethinking old assumptions, but we're skeptical whenever anyone starts talking about creating a regulatory "system" to assure political speech work the way they think it should.
Take Schmitt. During the 1990s, when Republicans had the edge in fundraising and the edge in fundraising from small donors, Schmitt was doling out money for George Soros's Open Society Institute, seeking to put more restrictions on campaign financing. Then he spent some time working for Bill Bradley, in pursuit of the same goal. Bradley, some will recall, made campaign finance a big issue in his losing campaign against Al Gore in 2000. Now that the Democrats have the edge in both total fundraising and small dollar fundraising for the first time since the modern era of campaign finance began in the 1970s, Schmitt's view of money in politics is changing. Great.
But what does he suggest? First, he wants us to "understand the achievements of Obama, ActBlue, and others and institutionalize them into a real system that works for voters and all candidates." Obama and ActBlue, if I'm not mistaken, are big Democratic fundraisers. True, Schmidt wants their methods to work for "all candidates," but it seems not to have occured to him that different candidates, parties, and political movements inherently rely on different sources of funding. Various conservative groups have tried variations on the ActBlue approach, without ActBlue's success. This may be because Republicans, so competent at direct mail, are just a bunch of hapless nimrods when it comes to internet fundraising. But it more likely actually reflects different demographics and habits that are part and parcel of being more likely to be a Democrat or a Republican. In short, the Democrats have found a system for raising money that meets Mr. Schmitt's particular democratic (and Democratic) sensibilities for how campaigns should be funded, so suddenly he wants to "institutionalize" that system in our laws, to the detriment of those (i.e. Republicans) who do better raising funds in other ways.
Then he wants to throw some more public tax dollars into the mix. In this regard, he likes New York City's six to one match for small contributions: get a $25 private contribution, for example, and the taxpayers give you another $150. Of course, this would enormously increase President Obama's likely fundraising advantage in the next election. If Obama raises $250 million in small contributions, the government will give him another $1.5 billion to spend. If his GOP opponent raises $150 million in small contributions, he'll get just $900 million from the government, ballooning Obama's spending advantage from small contributors from $100 million to $700 million.
Schmitt offers a few other ideas as well, and as you go through them, you realize that every one is likely to benefit Democrats. I don't think that this is necessarily Schmitt's intent, which illustrates the problem of regulation. It would be easy to oppose regulation if proponents of regulation would just say, "we support this regulation because it will give us a big advantage over our rivals." But instead, what we see over and over in campaign finance is that proposals for reform just happen to benefit the political preferences and forms of campaigning of the person making the proposal. Some of this is in fact an intentional effort to gain the upper hand, though obviously no one will say so publicly. But more insidiously, it is natural in politics for people of good will, such as Mr. Schmitt, to think of one's own form of influence as "legit," and one's opponents influence as "illegitimate." This is why the Obama campaign has thrown so many long time advocates of regulation for a loop - as Schmitt implies, they suddenly have to rationalize why raising tons of money and vastly outspending your opponents is perfectly OK, after years of saying it was very bad for our Republic. Schmitt's answer is that it is OK because of the way the Democrats are doing it. In fact, he says, it is not only OK, it should now be mandated, to "institutionalize" a system that benefits the political party that - shazam! - Schmitt supports. But Schmitt's normative case for why the Democrats' new system is "better" relies on most of the same faulty assumptions and understandings as Schmitt's old assumptions as to why money was more inherently bad when the Republicans were raising more of it. (The problems with those assumptions are amply documented on this blog and elsewhere, including my own writings, such as this, and of others, such as this and this).
And what has no place in Mr. Schmitt's schemes is simply the idea that maybe freedom works, let alone the idea that freedom might have value in and of itself.
We are used to being called "ideologues" by those who oppose our ideas for reforming the system through deregulation. But the real ideologues, we think, are those such as Mr. Schmitt and others in the reform community. Because every time they see campaign finance regulation fail, they are willing to consider pretty much any possible solution - except deregulation. Deregulation, for them, is the one answer that can never be on the table. Government regulation is the sine qua non of their bargaining position.
We're glad that Mr. Schmitt and many other liberal Democrats are re-examing their assumptions about money in politics. We hope that process will continue. We look forward to the day they work with us to deregulate the system, not merely to shift the regulation around in ways that happen to benefit their preferred candidates. Still, for now we'll take what we can get, and we're glad to see Mr. Schmitt's thoughts move beyond the old paradigm he trumpted for many years.
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