Remora

Campaign finance reform. Lives there a man with heart so dead, that to himself he has not said, I don't give a good goddamn about campaign reform? It is the kind of issue favored by newspaper editors, and the H.L. Mencken part of my heart already finds that suspicious or, what is worse, laughable. On the other hand, my hero, Ralph Nader, loves it. So why does Limited Inc feel mal de mer every time the subject comes around?

It isn't that we think campaigns can't be regulated. Politics is a market, and markets are necessarily subject to regulation of one kind or another, as previous posts have abundantly announced. Our idea is that, before we talk about amounts of money, we talk transparency. Transparency is a condition for understanding just how the market works -- and that primitive condition is still not met in politics. We think that disclosure laws that would force politicians who vote for, say, softening laws on tax havens, to list those contributors to their campaigns who might benefit from such votes would be a nice start. This is easier to do now than every before -- computers could easily match lists of contributors to votes which effect contributors. The kind of accounting Enron encouraged is the kind that goes on in D.C. every day -- with lobbyists acting as secret partners, and the trades being in bill writing, an art that exists at one remove from pick pocketing.

And another thing. There should definitely be firewalls between working for the guv and working for lobbying groups. That Wendy Gramm could quit heading the Commodity futures trade commission and blithely skip to a job at Enron should, obviously, be illegal. Corporations do this all the time -- they hire their head management honchos with clauses in their contracts specifying that the person hired is not allowed to work for a competitor for a certain period if the person quits. Government contracts for people who have the power that Ms. Gramm had should simply have the same wording.

But as for thinking that campaign finance reform will produce less bribed executive, legislative and judicial branches -- the politics of bribery begins with the composition of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. These folks have been ideologically bribed long before they fill their pockets with lucre. Who do they know? Who do they talk to? They know and talk to the most privileged. Most politicos, in their mothers' wombs, were already stewing in the greed, the overbearing self-righteousness, the hypocrisy, the slickness, that makes them what they are to mankind -- a species of Cain somehow come among us to rule over us with cliches, windiness, and that vile slogan in their hearts, am I my brother's keeper?

Okay, Limited Inc is going too far. Invective is one vector into fascism, and we have noted that, lately, we have tended to the intemperate. A-and we certainly prefer yahoos to Houyhnhnms when it comes to picking masters. But the point is: in politics as in any other area of life, rules are no substitute for content. The alienation of the great middle mass of Americans, struggling with credit cards, love, family, hope, labor and all the rest of it, has been built up from over two decades of the state's relentless war against its weakest members, and to do something about that, we need, well, the politics of content, not the politics of process.

That said, there is comic potential in the upcoming house fight about campaign reform. Common Cause, a sturdy soldier in this endless war, has published a nice survey of upcoming legislative follies. Here, for instance, is an addendum to the campaign finance bill sponsored by some Ohio republican named Ney:


The Ney bill purports to cap, rather than ban, soft money at $75,000 per corporate, union, or individual donor per party committee per year. Because both of the political parties have three national committees, a single donor could give $225,000 in soft money to the party of their choice each year. The same donor could, as many donors do, decide to give to both parties - and Ney-Wynn would allow one donor to give $450,000 if they spread their contributions around in $75,000 increments to the six national party committees. In a two-year cycle then, any corporation, labor union, or wealthy individual could give $900,000 in soft money in an election cycle.

But the Ney bill only proposes this so-called "cap" for the national party committees, and would encourage donors to give unlimited amounts of soft money to state party committees which would be free, under Ney, to launder this money into any federal election.

Under Ney-Wynn bill, a single donor could give $900,000 to the parties in an election cycle, and then give unlimited amounts to a state party committees if allowed by state law. By encouraging donors to steer excess soft money to state party committees, Ney-Wynn has the added negative effect of making it harder to have full disclosure of exactly who is funding a particular candidate's campaign. And unlike Shays-Meehan, the Ney bill would let federal officials - like the President, Vice President, or any Member of Congress - solicit any of this soft money personally."