So Hastert/Pelosi/Jefferson vs. FBI/BushCo was the major story of the
weekend. Is it hilariously appalling, or appallingly hilarious, that
the Republican Speaker of the House is calling on a Republican
adminstration to stop investigating a GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! Democrat
— because he thinks he’s next? And that the Democratic
Minority Leader helped him out? And that he apparently
threatened the DOJ with funding cutoffs? Even GOP ex-congressman John
Kasich was turning eight shades of purple this morning on <a
href=”http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/”>Bobbleopoulos. To say that
this Congress has jumped the
shark is an insult to the great and hallowed tradition of
shark-jumping.
Also this morning, George Will was intoning sententiously that gee
willikers, just because
- interest group A gave money to legislator B, and then
- legislator B votes in favor of interest group A,
- you can’t say that A bribed B — that’s just going too
far!
Well, George, no it’s not going too far at all. It’s a perfectly
reasonable assumption in most cases. The truth is that It Does Look
Like a Bribe. Substantively, It Is A Bribe: Anyone who
thinks that special-interest campaign dollars are given without the
expectation of a quid-pro-quo is from Mars. It is without doubt a Conflict
of Interest: a public servant simply cannot be expected to cast a
vote on the merits when cash is on the table.
Shouldn’t law enforcement be aware of this reality? Insofar as this
represents a real change in tactics and interpretation, I’m all for it.
Yes, I would say that if they accepted campaign bucks, that gives the appearance that they were all (legally) bribed. That’s the system we have now. And all of us small donors are now locked in battle to collectively bribe back our party, and indeed our country. That’s really how I see it. The notion of transparency that you bring up is surely relevant, but it’s not enough.
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It’s worth clarifying here what I don’t consider bribery:
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1. votes in favor of a candidate
2. speech: letters, blogs, signs, and otherwise holding forth
3. volunteering
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etc.
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Now, all these may have some monetary value, but they’re clearly not money, therefore not bribery.
to get really technical, bribery includes any “valuable item.” You can’t limit it to cash – that’s way too restrictive, and I can think of lots of instances in which something other than cash is more valuable. (The president of HugeOilCo offering Rep. Crooked’s son a cushy high-paying job in exchange for voting to open drilling in ANWR.)
Charley, your analysis conveniently exempts from the damning assumption of bribery your blog postings. Leaving aside, for a moment, the incontrovertible value for candiates that are supported by a blog, I would simply point out that the US S.Ct held in Buckley that campaign donations are a form of symbolic speech protected by the 1st Amendment.
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Obviously, I think the Supreme Court ruled incorrectly. To quote the Da Vinci Code, “Only cash is cash.” And only speech is speech.
Putting aisde the heady legal conclusions of Dan Browne….
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Even if, as you assert, the S.Ct did rule “incorrectly”, one could suggest that BMG, .08, Beyond 495 and other organs of the Deval Patrick campaign (nominal and polite criticsim from these blogs notwithstanding) continue to make undeclared, in-kind contributions similar to phone banks.
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I disagree with that suggestion, but I’m just trying to make a point that different organizations participate in the political process differently. I do not think that bloggers are more or less virtuous than the AFL-CIO or ExxonMobil PACs. (Though, at least PAC’s are regulated and anybody can examine their activity). I am merely contending that do-gooders generally think everyone else is corrupt, but usually consider their activity beyond reproach.
.08 and B495 have publicly endorsed Patrick. We haven’t. Don’t lump everyone together. You know less about us than you think you do.
Speech is speech. What does that mean? Do you believe in expressive speech? Do you believe that silence can be speech? Words alone are not the only form of speech recognized by the S Ct and thank heavens for that! Flipping someone the bird is a form of speech. The case Buckley v. Valejo is often simplified to money=speech. That is patently NOT what was said or meant in Buckley. The speech the S Ct was protecting was the right of a candidate to spend money. The Court reasoned, among many other things in the case, that to prohibit a candidates expenditures would be tantamount to restricting speech. The United States offered no compelling reason (the scruntiny which is required when restricting speech) to restrict speech and therefore we ended up with money equalling speech. However, it really isn’t money it is the act of spending money on things such as ads and literature. I think this is perfectly reasonable and I whole heartedly agree with the Court’s decision.
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The Court did however recognize that the state could regulate the amount of money contributed to a candidate because this act was not the same type of speech as a candidate’s expenditure. So to villify the Buckley decision is a little ignorant of the facts because the decision does support some of your ideas at least to some degree.
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Finally as to the whole issue of bribery I have often thought the same way as you. But then again I have thought the same thing about voting. When a candiate courts you for your vote the understanding is that the relationship will be quid pro quo. You vote for me and I support clean elections. You vote for me and I support abortion, etc. clearly some quid pro quo relationships are acceptable such as campaigning on issues and asking people to trade their votes for support of those issues. One point you don’t consider is whether the monetary support comes because the candidate already supports the issues the donor wants or because the donor is trying to influence the candidate. I think this makes a big difference. I give financial support to candidates I already agree with, not because I want to sway their opinion, does this still constitute bribery?
For me, this discussion is about money and politics. I can’t help but think that Charlie supports public financing of campaigns – because he’s made it clear that anytime anyone gives money to a campaign, anywhere, that’s a bribe.
I’ve often heard people lament the fact that a person who would run for Governor of Massachusetts must either be independently wealthy or a political life-timer. My reaction is: Why shouldn’t it be that way? Could I say “I want to be the CEO of Microsoft today, put my name in the hat.” No, I’d have to spend a long time and plenty of energy, and work my way strategically towards that. Why would the position of our state’s Governor be any different?
Does this relate to bribery? Let me put it this way. Campaigns need money. Money is control. So we understand that the campaign of the common man, brave and independent, is not going to happen. A candidate is either rich and self-financed, or he is a person of average means and financed by an outside entity or entities, which therefore have a measure of influence over him. It’s not complete control, because he can always find other supporters (unless we are talking publicly funded campaigns, in which case the control is complete). But he will always be influenced by others.
Do you see a way out of that? I don’t – and I’m not quite so sure what’s what’s wrong with that. Nothing is free of ties and influences in this world. Nothing is perfectly independent. It is impossible in a democracy to have a politician who is dependent on no one except themselves, and I wouldn’t want one who was anyway, since they could then mess up my life and I’d have no leverage against them. Therefore, let us document their dependencies in the form of publicly filed campaign contributions subject to reasonable limits, and move on to talking about the issues.
You misframed the argument for public financing, so even though your post was well written and your point well argued, you knocked down a straw man. I don’t think you did it on purpose, though.
Your premise is off-target. Clean elections advocates don’t present that (false) choice and then lament it. The issue isn’t with wealthy candidates, the issue is with everyone else. Whether or not they’re political life-timers is not important. What’s important is that all non-wealthy candidates face the same dilemmas and distorted influences from privatized campaign financing. These influences are bad for our democracy.
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This is one of those responses that got too long for a comment, so I posted it here.
That’s the big difference, I think, between payments for influence, which current law allows, and illegal payments.