Money_in_Contemporary_Politics

Jesse Brooks If the 2010 midterms were any indication, the 2012 presidential election should be a knock down, dragout, politics as blood sport affair. Things should really begin to get exciting in the coming months, as (presumably) a republican favorite will emerge, couple this with a possible leftward primary challenge for Obama and all bets are off. 2012 will also be a transformative election because it will be the first presidential election after the citizens united ruling. This year we saw presidential election type money being spent in midterms, spending for 2012 should be off the charts. Because citizens united represents a significant paradigm shift, one which we won’t know the impact of until the campaign season gets going, I feel that any talk about fixing the system for presidential campaign finance would be inherently speculative, because we haven’t seen a presidential election under these very new rules yet. Still, while the specifics might be vague, its not tough to figure out the broad strokes of the impact that the ruling will have on presidential financing, that is to say there will likely be money being pumped into the 2012 election on a scale that we have never seen before. Couple citizens united with a troubled economy and genuine grass roots fears about the future of the United States as well as the interminable primary season, which only serves to feed the national news echo chamber and the result is constant white but non ambient noise. Before citizens united blew up the levees, I actually thought that the 2008 presidential election was fundraised in a pretty democratic way. Obama received 88% of his contributions from individuals, McCain accepted federal assistance and only raised 54% of his money from individuals and 23% from the federal government. It was clear from very early on that Obama was going to outspend Mccain by a great deal McCain raised $370 million and spent $330 million Obama raised a staggering $745 million and spent $730 million. The writing was on the wall, the only way to be competitive in a presidential election was to decline matching federal funds and raise small individual donations. Even during the 2010 midterms small individual contributions still were very important. Rand Paul, Kentucky’s incoming junior senator took a page from his father, Texas congressman Ron Paul’s book, by holding a series of “money bombs”. Money bombs are large coordinated online fundraising efforts. The campaign sets a goal for fundraising online fundraising within a certain small time frame (usually a couple of hours and a few hundred thousand dollars) and supporters log in and donate, this strategy was wildly successful and apart from the monetary gains, generated valuable buzz for Paul. Examples like the money bomb indicate that regardless of the rules of corporate donations, it will still usually be in candidate’s best interests to raise money from middle class supporters. Such efforts are as much about mobilizing those supporters and making them feel as though they are an important part of the campaign as they are about fundraising. Politicians like Paul tend to lose that willingness to make the effort to solicit small contributions once they become established and have more access to senatorial, congressional or national committees and PACs. It is unlikely that Obama will do that well (on small individual donations)just today came out in favor of third party spending by democratic groups, something he discouraged while running in 2008. Labor Unions and other liberal PACs are likely to pour massive amounts of money into advertising efforts for his re-election, and you can bet that conservative PACs like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Dick Armey’s Freedomworks will do the same, likely with more vitriol. The vitriol is one of the main consequences of citizens united. Because of the fact that the DNC and RNC as well as individual candidates don’t want to expose themselves to the negative backlash that having to show your face and say you approved a nasty attack ad, that work has generally been left (by smart politicians) to interest groups. Now that interest groups are empowered to spend unlimited money on advertising it only seems like a logical consequence that the overall nastiness of political advertising will go up. The rhetoric surrounding Obama’s first two years were, to borrow a phrase from Jon Stewart “every tweak to the status quo is met with competing cries of facism and communism” was already heightened. And given the fact that faceless unaccountable PACs are now empowered to spend unlimited money on nasty campaign ads in a time of already heightened polarity the consequences could be vast, both for our politicians and our culture. So what can be done to fix the system' If it were up to me I’d reinstate McCain-Feingold, but I doubt that is on the horizon. For now the best short term solutions involve disclosure. It would be great if the Svengalis behind these PACs had to show their faces and say that they approve their messages. Also the tax rules need to be tweaked. Its entirely insufficient for 527’s to get away with being considered nonpolitical simply because they refrain from using an arbitrary assortment of buzz words in their ads. I don’t think its constitutional to ban interest groups from all political spending, but I feel like a good solution would be to limit them to one medium. An interest group that advertises on tv wouldn’t be able to advertise on the internet or in print. Another component that is definitely needed to turn down the volume of the debate is adjusting the primary season. It needs to be moved up and condensed. Last year the Iowa caucauses were held on January 3 and the last primary the Idaho Republican was held on May 27. That means that primary season lasted almost six months in 2008. That’s too long for a litany of reasons, first It gives the echo chamber much more time then it needs to ruminate and pontificate on the primaries, its more expensive for everyone involved and its anti democratic. If I were remaking the system I’d have New Hampshire and Iowa in the same week in late February and hold 10 primaries a week in March. My idea is a regional drawing system in which every week 2 states each from the Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, Southwest and Northwest are picked at random to hold their primaries. That would mean no more invalidate results, like Michigan and Florida in 2008 and it would give every state a chance, over the course of 5 elections to have its citizens pick their party’s nominees. This would also mean that the primary season would be compressed from a six month ordeal to a lean two months. This will obviously never happen, but I don’t think that’s because of the national political climate today. States want the right to hold their primaries at their discretion to reap the economic benefits and increased exposure that primary elections bring, its unlikely that they’d yield their power to some sort of national election system, but never say never.