Rodney A. Smith - Money, Power, and Elections: How Campaign Finance Reform Subverts American Democracy

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Media and Public Affairs
Robert Mann, Series Editor

MONEY, POWER &
ELECTIONS

HOW CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
SUBVERTS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

RODNEY A. SMITH

WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

Published in cooperation with the
Kevin P. Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs

Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge

Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2006 by Rodney A. Smith
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Louisiana Paperback Edition, 2013

Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne
Typeface: Berthold Baskerville Book

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Rodney A., 1941
Money, power, and elections : how campaign finance reform subverts American democracy / Rodney A. Smith.
p. cm. (Politics@media)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8071-5630-8 (pbk. : alk paper) ISBN 978-0-8071-5631-5 (pdf) ISBN 978-0-8071-5632-2 (epub) ISBN 978-0-8071-5633-9 (mobi)
1. Campaign fundsUnited States. 2. DemocracyUnited States. I. Title. II. Series.
JK1991.S58 2006
324.7'80973dc22

2005023906

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

To my wife
Mary Margaret
and
my four children
Kelli, Nani, Rhett, and Parker
For making it all worthwhile.

CONTENTS

TABLES

FIGURES

PREFACE

The Constitution of the United States... its only keeper, the people.
George Washington

Since I wrote this book in 2006, this nation has had four congressional and two presidential elections that have simplyand amplydemonstrated the flaws and dangers in our election system. These self-inflicted defectstriggered mostly by campaign finance reformcontinue to protect incumbents, favor deep pockets, and perpetuate congressional gridlock beyond the dilatory process envisioned by the Framers.

In 2008, the United States experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

These seemingly unrelated eventsour recent economic upheaval, our flawed election system, and congressional gridlock-are the direct result of government officials carelessly disregarding important principles articulated in our Constitution.

Alarmingly, as the Spirit of 1776 has faded from memory, too many officials in Washington have tended to treat the Constitution mostly as an empty vessel into which any meaning can be poured. Even worse, these officials have mostly ignored the wisdom and intent of our Founding Fathers.

This updated edition of my book, then, has a special importance today as we head into a new election cycle, and I hope that it may find a greatly expanded audience that will awaken to the crisis our country is facing so that they perhaps come to understand the importance and significance of the kind of reforms I am proposing. I do not hesitate to add before its too late, because the crisis our country is facing demands language no less emphatic than that.

As I suggest in the book, what comes first is deemed most important. In the preamble of the Constitution, it is We the People. In other words, we, the sovereigns of this republic. In the Bill of Rights, our first and most basic rights are outlined in the First Amendment.

This amendment is primarily concerned with the political rights of the people. Freedom of speech is the bedrock freedom that supports all the other freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Destroy freedom of speech and you have destroyed the foundation of American democracy.

Without money, candidates cannot effectively exercise their right to free speech. Given the importance of this sacred right, campaign finance reform laws should have been proposed as a constitutional amendment. They would have then been subject to the rigors of the ratification process and the will of the people, who are sovereign in America. Instead, in a shameful betrayal of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, these reform measures sailed through Congress, and the Supreme Court simply declared them constitutional.

In their zeal to correct a perceived (not proven) financial problem nearly four decades in the making, the Supreme Court imposed a monetary straightjacket on Americas political system with its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision. This decision, in conjunction with the Courts subsequent McCain-Feingold ruling in 2002 as well as its SpeechNow and Citizens United conclusions in 2010, have made Americas competitive two-party election process dangerously dysfunctional. Congressional inaction has now become the norm.

In the Courts Buckley ruling, which justified its initial restrictions on contributions, the ruling stated: The primary interest served by the limitation... is the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption spawned by the real or imagined corrosive influence of larger financial contributions on candidates positions and on their actions if elected to office.... To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is undermined. Although the scope of such pernicious practices can never be reliably ascertained... (emphasis added).

Given that little hard, provable evidence was available while writing its Buckley decision, the Court had to rely mostly on illusionary and hearsay evidence. Such evidence can neither be proven nor disproven and, thus, should never be used as a basis for altering the Bill of Rights, which the Preface to the Paperback Edition Framers set up to be beyond the reach of the government. Sadly, the Supreme Court chose to disregard this important detail.

When it comes to money, power, and elections, there is no perfect solution. Our Founding Fathers understood a fundamental truth: no matter how the structure is framed, it is going to contain imperfections. This essential fact does not influence the reformers of today.

In the world of politics money is speech. When candidates lack the money to buy space and time in the media, they are politically paralyzed. They cannot communicate with voters. Anyone or anything that deprives candidates of the means to carry their message to the electorate abridges their First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Tragically, the Supreme Courts campaign finance reform decisions have gutted our competitive two-party election process and shifted the financial power in politics away from candidates and political parties toward corporations, unions, super PACs, rogue 527 groups, and sham nonprofit entities. None of these entities are people who have been granted the privilege to vote as individuals and, as such, are not part of We the People. Thus the government has the right to regulate them in ways not appropriate for individual citizens.

As a result, these election laws have seriously weakened American democracy by making it nearly impossible for nonincumbent candidates without wealth to compete. They have also given elite special-interest groups and disingenuous nonprofits a huge financial advantage in the political arena.

What neither the Court nor the mass media seems to understand is that the draconian contribution restrictions now in force make raising money for an obscure, nonwealthy, nonincumbent candidate a monumental cash flow nightmare. As I point out in Chapter 8, political campaigns and military campaigns are similar in that they both survive on the same fuelmoney, more money, and still more money. Without this basic resource both are almost always doomed to fail.

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