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Just about every time I pick up the paper, watch the TV or listen to the radio, I hear about yet another campaign-finance scandal from last year's election. The outrage seems to focus on two themes:
1) The Clinton administration's use of federal facilities (the Lincoln bedroom, coffees elsewhere in the White House) to make campaign contributors feel good about themselves, and
2) That foreigners (Chinese, Indonesians, etc.) were making campaign contributions, which could affect American election outcomes and thus national policy.
As for the first, well, I'm as disgusted as any Dittohead. I also wonder if Rush Limbaugh has talked about the night he spent in the Lincoln bedroom as a guest of President George Bush -- after which, Limbaugh muted his criticism of Bush.
As for the second, well, our government has often made determined the composition of other countries' governments. We installed the shah in Iran, overturned an elected government in Guatemala, placed satraps in charge of South Vietnam, assisted in removing Salvadore Allende from the Chilean presidential palace, etc.
Remember that common saying: What goes around, comes
around.
Further, if we're all that worried about foreign
influence, we could look at the financial markets. The
Clinton administration (why it ever gets accused of being
liberal
is one of those modern mysteries) generally
operates so as to please the bond markets, especially the
purchasers of U.S. Treasury securities.
And last year, according to an article in the Washington Monthly, about three-fourths of these securities were purchased by foreign governments.
So if you run some foreign country and you want to influence U.S. policy, just buy bonds. Bondholders, like any other creditors, are in position to call the tune to get the dance they want.
Nonetheless, there will be pressure for campaign reform. Clinton's excuse is that TV time is expensive, so he needed to raise a lot of money, because the Republicans raised even more. And his current reform proposal is that broadcasters provide free air time to candidates, as a public service in return for their use of the broadcasting spectrum.
When pigs fly. Let's get real here. I used to think the ideal campaign reform was not to limit contributions, but to insure that all contributors were identified. Then, at least, we'd know who owned our politicians.
But in practice, that doesn't work well. You see a Jane Doe on the contributor list, and it takes some work to find out if she's the Jane Doe who's a lobbyist for the Arrogant Cable Monopoly or the Jane Doe who's public-affairs director for the Greed Land Development Company.
By the time you track that down, the election is generally long past, and it's too late for your reporting to make any difference.
And so, I've hit upon a new campaign reform: All contributions must be anonymous.
The government will contract with a state-of-the-art keep-the-secrets bank in one of those off-shore havens like Guernsey or Belize.
All campaign contributions go there, thence to be
disbursed to the campaign offices. With your contribution
-- cash, check or money-order -- you would indicate the
candidate or committee, and provide a short personal
identification code like YZ351JX.
The bank would
mail a receipt -- your name and address would not be on the
receipt inside the envelope -- indicating that $100,000
from YZ351JX had been deposited in the appropriate campaign
account.
Most campaign contributors say they do so because the candidate advances causes they support, and the anonymous donation would allow this American tradition to continue.
But those who are trying to buy access, and the candidates who sell it, would run into trouble. President Clinton couldn't invite $100,000-and-up soft-money donors to the White House because he wouldn't know who they are.
If you showed up waving a $100,000 receipt to YZ351JX, they'd have no way to know whether you were really YZ351JX. For all they know, the receipt could be forged, and it wouldn't get you any special treatment.
Thus office-holders would be able to spend their face time with people who were interesting, rather than willing to donate, and those who wanted influence would have to make their case, rather than buy it.
Without the access incentive, many contributors might scale back, thereby getting some of the money out of politics. Campaigns might focus more on talking to voters, rather than buying TV time for the implanting of contrived threats and bogus solutions.
The more I think about requiring all campaign contributions to be anonymous, the better I like it. It appears to solve all the major problems of our current system. So of course, it will never happen.
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