Suddenly campaign finance reform is all the rage in the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton is the latest to make the issue a key part of her pitch to voters, and I suppose that’s a good thing, inasmuch as we know that the heavy influx of private money into our political system is a very bad thing for American democracy. But, speaking just for myself here, as much as statements of principle are important, this is one issue where I can’t really get interested in your principles unless you tell me in detail how you plan to put them into action. After all, most people support campaign finance reform in principle, so if principles were all that mattered, we’d already have done something about the problem. But nobody has figured out how to get a bunch of politicians to vote against their own self-interest by doing something to get the money out of the system. Take Clinton’s plan:
“We have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political system, and drowning out the voices of too many everyday Americans,” Clinton said in a statement. “Our democracy should be about expanding the franchise, not charging an entrance fee. It starts with overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision, and continues with structural reform to our campaign finance system so there’s real sunshine and increased participation.”
As Clinton has said before, her plan notes she would only appoint Supreme Court justices who would support overturning Citizens United. And Clinton reiterated her support for constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s decision, something that would be a longshot at best.
Yeah, you think?
Overturning Citizens United means essentially waiting for at least one of the five justices who ruled in favor of opening the flood gates to, uh, leave the court for some reason. And while Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are pretty old, there’s also no reason to think that either one is heading out the door anytime soon. And you’d have a hard time in today’s political environment getting 38 states to ratify a constitutional amendment that says that puppies are nice, let alone one that requires majorities of the legislatures in those 38 states to literally vote money out of their own pockets. If you’re not going to explain how you plan to get that amendment ratified, or what you plan on doing if Scalia, Kennedy, and company keep on keeping on, then what kind of plan do you really have? It’s fine to claim, as Martin O’Malley did a few months ago, that politicians should welcome publicly financed campaigns because it would free them from the chore of fundraising, but fundraising is the great unequalizer, the thing that put politicians in office and keeps them there regardless of whatever else they do while they’re in office. And, look, if politicians really wanted to be relieved of fundraising, they’d already have done something to relieve themselves of it.
The one part of Clinton’s plan that shows any kind of a pulse is the idea that you could increase transparency in the donation process and possibly shame some big money donors into changing their behavior. But a proposal for stronger disclosure rules for publicly traded corporations is currently dead-ended at the Securities and Exchange Commission, thanks of course to massive political pressure against it from major corporations and corporate lobbying groups. Moreover, even these rules wouldn’t cover private individuals like the Kochs, Haim Saban, or Sheldon Adelson, or privately-held corporations, and these are some of the biggest players in party politics (and as private entities they may be impervious to shame anyway).
I don’t mean to single Clinton out; Bernie Sanders’s campaign finance plan isn’t much different than hers and suffers from the same vagueness in terms of how he plans to enact it. Don’t get me started on Lawrence Lessig, whose “referendum president” idea evokes the kind of serious, well-thought out plan that you’d expect from a guy who’s apparently going to pick his running mate via web poll (I’d like to write in “Anger from Inside Out,” because I think he’d provide the sober national security leadership that the country so desperately needs right now).
The one significant piece of campaign finance reform legislation that’s managed to pass Congress since Watergate was the McCain-Feingold reform in 2002, and that was picked to death by the courts even before Citizens United gutted it for keeps, so even appointing a justice or two who will vote to overrule that case isn’t going to fix all that ails the system. The bottom line is that, feel good talk and piecemeal reform ideas aside, the only way that campaign finance can be substantially reformed is via a constitutional amendment, and that’s, you know, “a longshot at best.” Until one of these candidates explains how he or she is planning to make it less of a longshot, they’re just paying lip service to the issue.
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