Topic: Ron Paul
New Agenda for the Ron Paul Platform: Campaign Finance Reform Why Ron Paul should support a policy of radical campaign finance reform.by World
(libertarian)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Each primary season, many contenders vie for the public spotlight, most notably in the major parties presidential primary. As usual, the "top-tier" candidates will steal the show again, with respect to the attention of the American populace as a whole. Anecdotal sidenotes are made of "fringe" candidates who often promote some of the most intriguing political issues, issues which have been disregarded or ignored routinely by the main stream media. More attention is placed on which candidate has raised the largest war chest than on the candidates beliefs, voting record, and agenda for the future. In a nation this large with such a large percentage of Americans disinterested in politics, it takes a fairly herculean effort just to reach out to each of them. Sadly, many candidates never receive a chance to reach out and form a grassroots base from which to attain the means to compete.
Be it a republic, or a democracy, the integrity of the election process is paramount to the authority of a representative government. Despite the fact that I have not heard this spoken of in any of Ron Paul's speeches on the role of limited government, I firmly believe that this should be near the top of our priority list, and I argue that he should too. The current system dramatically disadvantages any candidate who cannot amass tens of millions in their campaign fund. That is not to say that it is not possible, Ron Paul himself rose from near obscurity to raise over 20 million, very near the level of many of his Republican counterparts. Who is to say that Mike Gavel, Dennis Kucinich, or Tom Tancredo did not deserve a more balanced run at the primary nod.
I propose Ron Paul support a platform of radical campaign finance reform, leveling the economic playing field for all primary contenders. As fair elections are a lynchpin of a representative government, they should be supported solely with our tax dollars. Remove the influence of big business lobbyists from the process. Without getting bogged down in the details, providing something like 20 million to each candidate for the primary season to spend as they see fit. Make it 100 million for the national election. It would still be a drop in the bucket of our countries expenditures, and actually be spent on providing a forum for all candidates, equally. Perhaps sponsor federally funded debates where all of the candidates are guaranteed to participate equally, reducing the influence of major media. What about free speech you ask? If individuals want to express thier support a particular candidate, they could volunteer to canvass, or support "issue-ads", a form of free speech banned by the McCain-Feingold Act (that part of which should be repealed).
This would not fix the influence large media outlets seem to have over the outcome of our political contests, but would be a first step in removing the corruption which plagues our current election process. I also support the Read the Bills Act, which makes public for one week the exact language of legislation before it can be voted on, making our representatives more accountable for their actions.
Ron Paul talks a great deal about scaling back government, much of which I agree with, but voting reform has no large constituency pushing for it. It would require a leader with great foresight to push it to the forefront of American political discussion, and I think Ron Paul could be that man.
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It's a nice idea in spirit, but providing federal money to finance candidates has more potential for abuse than the current system. Obviously the government can't afford to provide equal cash to ALL potential candidates, so the manipulation slides further up the scale in the 'who gets what' decision making process. It in fact becomes even easier to crown a prince without the people's consent.
Do you really think the current set of incumbants, republican or democrat, elected, appointed, government official or party official, would have offered a penny to the likes of Ron Paul, Mike Gavel, or god forbid a 3rd party candidate?
I've looked at this issue closely -- I was the '18-year-old' independent candidate for U.S. President in 1984.
After looking at it, I believe that public financing should be provided only for the campaigns of incumbents, not challengers.
What?!? Did I just say that?? It sounds counter-intuitive. But it's true. This article's author suggests that financing go "to each candidate for the primary season," but then doesn't define that nor narrow it down. If $20 million was there for the taking, for any challenger, there would be 1,000 people who sign up to be primary candidates.
I learned something when I was an alternative candidate in the general election: I had company. Each time around, some 200 people file a candidacy for U.S. President at the Federal Election Commission. (In order to distinguish myself, I went to the alternative candidates' convention, and came out on top there.)
Furthermore, I imagine that there are many people who enter the primary contests and whom the media never tell us about. For instance, no one knew that Alan Keyes was running until he appeared in an Iowa debate. In general, if someone is not a governor or a federal legislator, the news media will write them off without even telling us that they are making these editorial decisions. (So, if a State Rep. or State Senator ran for U.S. President, the editorial geniuses would decide that that person is a nutcase, end of story. The one exception seems to be Mike Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, and the exception is likely because of his billionaire financial standing.)
But my point is this-- where the author said "to each candidate for the primary season," how do you make the cutoff? Should every State Rep., State Senator, and Mayor be eligible? Should we say that "private citizens need not apply"? --Given $20 million, a lot more of them would run. And, it seems noxious and un-democratic to say "private citizens need not apply."
In 1984's election cycle, there were some 200 candidates running in the general. If each were given $100 million, as proposed above, the outlay would be $20 billion. No libertarian would ever go for that arrangement.
But, public financing FOR INCUMBENTS makes splendid sense. --Face it, challengers are struggling to get into office; incumbents are already there. Those who are already there are a limited group (there are 435 House members, 100 Senators, and 1 President/Vice President ticket). While there could be ten competitors for every office, there is only one incumbent, so this holds down the total cost of the expenditure as you discuss.
Of the incumbents, it is frankly MORE important to shield them from the vicissitudes of raising campaign money. Imagine if the job of a legislator was to legislate -- but not while raising money, and not subject to any worry that they "need" a big contributor for purposes of re-election.
Challengers should be allowed to raise money from whatever source as long as it is a voter in their district. They could in theory raise MORE money than the incumbent would get through public financing. When they get into office, by whatever means, their next campaign should be on the government, funded at the same level that got them elected in the first place.
Even if PAC money, lobbyists, or whomever contributed into the first campaign of a challenger, their influence would be reduced because the incumbent simply WOULD NOT HAVE the worry of re-election financing. Period.
In another reform, I would also amend the Constitution to have term limits -- ten years in the House, twelve years in the Senate, two terms for VP and Prez -- that's the maximum career that anyone should have as a federal office holder.
John - thanks for the thoughtful comments. I realize that the difficulty in my proposal is how high to set the bar for "lower tier" and independent candidates. Something as simple as winning your state's straw poll or requiring a number of signatures on a petition are ways that jump to mind. Your proposal of incumbent financing is intriguing. It would seem a problem though if challengers could raise more money - maybe cap their contributions at the level of the incumbent and you have a more fairly balanced system. I also agree that a big part of the problem lies with career politicians. When you make a career out of politics, you lose your livelihood when you lose an election. As for who should be considered a potential presidential candidate? Would it be so wrong to require someone to have served in the congress or senate? That alone would prove that the person has the support of their local constituency, weed down the number of potential candidates for cost constraints to the program, and act in a similar manner to other professional management positions, you dont go from an entry level position to CEO overnight. You should have to prove yourself and gain experience first.
Posted By: Eric Williams
Date: 2008-02-11 12:49:41
An easier solution, and one less likely to backfire with unintended conequences, would be to promote range voting.
http://www.rangevoting.org
The real devil in all the details of elections is the winner-take-all system. I'd say more, but the range voting website says it all better and more thoroughly than I could.
Thanks Eric - always like to learn something new. Range voting sounds like a great option. It would remove the political "pundits" on TV babbling about if candidate A left the race, where do his votes go, and more importantly, candidate B has no chance of winning, you are wasting your vote on him - enticing you to vote for the "lesser of 2 evils". It seems like this could be ADDED to my above suggestions and would not necessarily address some of the issues I had hoped to with my proposal above.
No thanks. Giving tax money to candidates is the ANTI-libertarian solution.
Require that all donations be publically disclosed, but beyond that, there should be no restrictions. If I want to sell my house and use it to fund somebody's campaign, that should be my right.
The super-rich already have a way around campaign finance laws: Buy a newspaper publisher and/or TV station. You can say anything you want from the bully pulpit of "The Press" with no restrictions whatsoever.
In fact, that's exactly what George Soros has been doing for the last decade with "Air America". An entire syndicated radio network that exists for no other reason than advancing the liberal agenda, with no campaign finance restrictions at all, no matter how much it advocates for or against candidates.
You'll never get money out of politics. Stop trying. Make it transparent and unrestricted.
Please go to this site and vote for Dr. Paul. It's a site about having an open GOP convention. You will have to write in his name at the bottom of the posted listed. Thanks to all. http://www.opengopconvention.com
I have heard the argument that giving money to candidates is against libertarian principles before, but never had it explained very well to me. I assume there is the belief that government regulation of anything, even an intrinsic function such as election of its representatives is somehow bad or flawed. I would argue that there has to be some regulation of election processes to prevent the corruption that would allow the richest and largest entities to gain control over elected officials. A completely deregulated election environment, would be a strongly biased system. I argue that our current system remains flawed, leading to retained power and the oligarchical nature of modern politics. Is it just random chance that Bush, Clinton, Bush, and possibly Clinton happen to be the best candidates to preside over a nation of over 300+ million people. Libertarians need to understand the system does not work as it is currently set up. There are ways to provide an individual free speech outlets - consider the issue ad suggestion I provided (go sell you house and run a TV commercial against abortion if that is important to you - Im not suggesting someone should stop you from doing that).
What some libertarians seem to be forgetting is that a limited government platform should include more funding and regulation to improve the current electoral situation which reared its ugly head in states like Louisiana, Washington, and New Hampshire.
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