theory & criticism  •  zombitorials

It's Hard Work

Yes, I’ve already had my say on campaign finance reform, but it seems there are always people out there who want to defend the atavistic medieval structure of pay-as-you-go politics that has dominated American government for much of its history. Most of these apologists for corporate government have an obvious agenda in supporting the status quo, but occassionally you hear someone whose politics are generally progressive coming out against campaign finance reform. Such an argument from such a person can be found at the blog ideonexus.com, and it is this argument that I take issue with.

The author, a dumbass whom for the purposes of this article we will call “Ryan,” argues that he was wrong in originally supporting campaign finance reform, writing: “I failed to take into account the complexity of our Political Arena. I was sold on the ideal of Campaign Finance Reform, the romanticism of a bipartisan effort led by McCain and Feingold.” If John McCain and Russ Feingold are romantics, then I’m Colin Farrell. But more on that later.

Ryan argues that campaign finance laws are unenforceable, because big-money donors will inevitably find ways to manipulate them to their advantage and because campaign finance laws restrict free speech. I won't deny that these are problems campaign finance reform must deal with, but they are not insurmountable obstacles. Yet these two problems have diverted many people from the basic issue here. Ryan's article is titled "Repeal Campaign Finance Laws," but are we really clear on what this means?

If all campaign finance laws were repealed, then all donations to politicians would be legal. These donations would include, for example, a tobacco company paying for a senator’s son to attend Harvard Law School, in exchange for that senator's vote against further restrictions on tobacco advertising and sales. In other words, if there were no campaign finance laws at all, out and out bribery would be legal, and that goes far beyond what even the most ardent opponents of campaign finance law would describe as “political speech.”

The question, therefore, is not one of whether to have campaign finance laws or not, unless Ryan does want to extend the definition of political speech to include bribery. The question, rather, is what limits to set on campaign finance laws to ensure that political speech is not restricted. We have to make a clear distinction here: everyone in the country has the right to voice whatever opinions they hold, political or otherwise. But do people have the right to donate unlimited amounts of money to groups or politicians? Do we consider giving money to a politician to be a form of speech?

No. You'll hear Republicans argue that, yes, giving money to a political campaign is a form of speech, but if we start considering monetary transactions to be "speech," then we should go ahead and legalize insider trading and let off the hook all those Enron executives who were giggling about sticking grandmothers in California with $400 electric bills. The question gets a little stickier, however, when we consider the loophole in the McCain-Feingold bill that let the 527 groups like the notorious Swift-Boat-Veterans-for-Truth and MoveOn.org raise unlimited amounts of money. In these cases it is not a matter of giving money to a particular politician's campaign; 527 groups can raise as much money as they want, as long as they are not directly associated with a candidate. If we prevent these groups from raising money, we may go down a slippery slope to the point of banning any political commentary. Ryan writes:

How is it fair to prevent citizens from putting their monies together to run ads intended to advocate their beliefs? How is it fair to restrict the content of Rush Limbaugh's radio show or prevent advertising the release of a Michael Moore film in the months leading up to an election? How do we objectively assess when all of these sources of speech are crossing the lines of Campaign Finance reform?

But no one is suggesting that Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh be shut down. The problem is not political commentators or humorists and their various rants, the problem is the millions of dollars that individuals and corporations can sink into political campaigns. The slippery slope is sometimes a risk you just have to take. If it were not, then we would have to get rid of social security and the Federal Reserve, because they could lead down the slippery slope to state socialism.

And yes, any campaign finance laws will be difficult to enforce. But difficulty of enforcement is not a viable argument against a law. As our beloved President has said, “it’s hard work.” To let the wealthiest citizens and corporations have a lock on political influence just because we aren’t willing to do hard work is not the spirit that brought us the prosperity and freedom we enjoy today. Laws against murder are difficult to enforce; only 64% of homicide cases lead to prosecution. But is that an argument to repeal laws against homicide? If we repealed laws against murder because they are hard to enforce, there would be a lot more murders. Similarly, if we repealed all laws concerning campaign financing, there would be a lot more corporate and big-money influence in politics.

Ryan concludes his article with a call to action: “Unfetter the market of ideas again, let the grassroots assemble their populist powers, let the corporatists wield their media monopolies. It is not ideal, nor fair, but it is better than legislating the freedom of speech,” he says. Citing the success in blocking Sinclair Broadcasting’s anti-Kerry propaganda^*, he states, “the people will find a way.” Now who is buying into an idealistic romance? According to the Washington Post,

Eight dollars out of every $10 collected from individuals by Democratic-leaning 527 groups have come from donors who have given at least $250,000 each, according to an analysis by The Washington Post of data on 527 donations maintained by Center for Public Integrity....

[Republican] donors have followed the same pattern as the Democratic ones: $9 out of every $10 collected by the GOP groups have come from people who have given more than $250,000 each, according to the latest data available from the Internal Revenue Service.

I do not want to diminish the accomplishments we have seen in 2004 by grassroots organizations like Moveon.org, but the idea that “the people will find a way” buys into a tradition of thought in the United States that has always believed that the indomitable spirit of the American individual will always win out against the faceless drones of evil, whether that individual is Jimmy Stewart fighting government corruption in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Luke Skywalker fighting the Evil Empire. This is a concept that is pervasive in American culture and central to our identity as Americans.

The problem is, it’s not always true. The little guy doesn’t always win; the people don’t always find a way. If you want to argue the point, talk to the Hungarian people who had to submit to Stalin’s tanks rolling through the streets of their capital in 1956. The people had spontaneously risen up in revolt against the Communist dictatorship; the people were just as quickly put down. For an example closer to home, talk to the people of Anniston, Alabama, whose 30,000 residents were poisoned by chemical giant Monsanto for more than 30 years. Sometimes the way that the people find is through legislation. There's nothing wrong with that; it is why we live in a democratic republic. And that is why laws are needed to prevent less than one percent of the population from having power over the other 99%. No one said it's going to be easy.

^*A Note on Sinclair Broadcasting:

This past fall, Sinclair Broadcasting ordered the television stations it owns, which reach 25% of American households, to air a ninety-minute anti-Kerry propaganda documentary just weeks before the election. Ryan writes that

Grass Roots organizations across the country contacted the companies that advertise on Sinclair's channels and threatened to boycott them. The advertisers pressured Sinclair and the company agreed to re-produce the documentary more even-handedly, even allowing John Kerry a rebuttal.

As it happened, a combination of grassroots pressure and stockholder revolt in the company led Sinclair to show only four minutes of the original documentary. But did Sinclair have the right to broadcast this documentary in the first place? The public airwaves are just that: public. Sinclair Broadcasting owns its stations, its transmitters, its production facilities, but one thing it does not own are the airwaves over which it broadcasts. We (and by “we” I mean the U.S. Government) own the airwaves; that is why it is illegal for Janet Jackson to show her breasts on broadcast television. Oddly, however, the FCC refused to step in in this clear case of abuse of the public trust.