I don’t have quite the same hair up my nose about campaign financing that George Will does. I think that it is manifest that our present system is corrupt but I’m not sure about how that can be corrected without the cure being worse than the disease.
I’d support Bernie Sanders’s constitutional amendment if it weren’t quite so transparent an attempt to kneecap associations of individuals who imputedly contribute to causes and candidates of whom Sen. Sanders disapproves without similarly encumbering associations of individuals who contribute to causes and candidates of whom he approves.
The objective of reform should be that it should actually reduce corruption or the appearance of corruption in the system while still being fair, democratic, and egalitarian. Is such a thing possible?
My own proposal is this:
This would need some tweeking for Presidential primaries.
Under this proposal, the Koch brothers could give as much as they want to a Presidential candidate, but couldn’t, for example, give any money to the gubernatorial race in Florida, as they can’t vote in our elections.
Unlimited donations are so that it is easier to figure out who has bought (access) to which politicians. Also, this would allow a Perot-type to fund a decent candidate for office instead of himself. But everyone would have to know where the money is coming from.
This also puts the kibosh on unions & PACs giving money to candidates.
Unfortunately, it still has major problems besides the fact that it would need a constitutional amendment before it would be legal. Most notably, it wouldn’t stop outside organizations from running thinly disguised adds in favor of a candidate with outside money. About the only solution I see to that is only allowing candidates for office to run political ads, but that is even more problematic.
Ellipsis:
I like it.
Your comments about believing people should tend to their own political farms heavily reinforced my own vague notions on the matter. Ten years is a long time to be reading someone!
You will never get an Amendment through on this, but you could do away with the secret donations in the 501s w/o an Amendment. Trying to control amounts has never worked, but we should try for transparency. Every political ad should be required to broadcast a link to which you could go and ascertain the names of all the people who contributed to the group funding the ad. (BTW, his work on making it possible to avoid transparency and avoid limits on donations has probably been the secret to McConnell’s rise to power in the Senate.)
Steve
No serious change will get through anyway, steve. The people running the show largely have the system they want.
And that’s part of my imaginary constitution that I keep threatening to write. (The threat is to myself. Writing a constitution is damned hard work!)
The Disclose Act that failed to pass Congress was riddled with exceptions for popular organizations like the AARP, the Sierra Club, the Humane Society, and the NRA. It was so patently unprincipled (and unconstitutional) that I don’t think it’s worth contemplating any reform.
I agree with Steve that controlling amounts hasn’t worked, transparency should be the goal, and an amendment isn’t possible (and probably undesirable).
Personally, I would lift all limits on individual donations to candidates (but require detailed income and expense disclosures) and change the current incentives to favor donation to individual candidates and political parties over other types of groups. There’s no way to get rid of of hidden money spending on issue advocacy but I think it’s possible to greatly disincentivize it compared to the status quo. Also, I’d return primaries to what they are supposed to be – an internal process by the political parties to choose candidates, instead of the mini-election system we have now.
Query- If you really want to bribe a politician one of the best ways is to make sure his family and friends get good jobs. We have groups like Open Secrets trying to track donations. Does anyone try to track where the families and friends of politicians end up working (or going to school) in a systematic manner?
Steve