Stop Them Before They Reform Again

Dick Meyer On Political Reform And Other Myths

(CBS)  Look at it from a different angle.

In the 2004 election cycle, all the candidates for federal offices raised a total of about $2 billion. That's a lot of money, right? Actually, no. If you had $2 billion you'd only be tied for 133rd place on the Forbes 400. It's the size of a very small hedge fund. It is less than 10 percent of what U.S. investment banks paid out in salary bonuses alone in 2005.

In other words, investing in politics is very, very cheap for American commercial interests; and that process is managed by professional lobbyists and merchants of influence. Money will find its way to office-seekers and office-holders. It always has been so.

That means successful reform must have deep political support and it has to be very well crafted. There is little public opinion evidence that voters are obsessing about lobbying reform. ("They're all a bunch of crooks, anyway.") And there is little evidence that congressional interest is anything more than cosmetic and self-interested.

An honest attempt at institutional reform would have to come on at least four major fronts: campaign finance, legislative process, lobbying and law enforcement.

There is no such thing as political reform without campaign finance reform, and anything short of public financing is probably futile. Since only about 0.64 percent of the U.S. adult population made a political donation in 2003-4, it is hard to imagine support for a taxpayer funded system.

The goal of election reform, in my mind, is not to keep money out of politics, it is to attract a higher caliber of person into politics, a person less susceptible to petty bribery and incumbentitis. The current system of fundraising is so repulsive, few successful and independent-minded people would submit to it.

The legislative process used now is uniquely vulnerable to corruption for two reasons: the amounts of money are so huge that tiny slices of slices of slices, steered properly, can enrich people and companies, and the process of appropriating government money and benefits has become more secretive.

Simply put, huge spending bills are voted on, though legislators have no time or ability to inspect them and they are full of pork, special interest presents and pet projects. This is the terrain where lobbyists do their most effective — and unseen — work regardless of whether the client is an Indian casino, a multinational, a community college, a crony's start-up company or a university research program.

The way Congress can spend taxpayer money has to be changed or this institutional corruption will still flourish.

After campaign and legislative reform, lobbying reform in the form of gift bans and real disclosure could be helpful, but only if there is a means to detect and enforce violations of these rules and the campaign finance rules.

There is currently no one in government tasked to do this. Congressional ethics committees don't do it, and neither does the Federal Election Commission or the Justice Department. The press isn't up to the job either.

So there. I guess maybe my recovery from reformism isn't as complete as I thought. Maybe there's a support group for losers like me somewhere. Maybe we could get Congress to fund a pilot program in, say, Bermuda.

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Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is the editorial director of CBSNews.com, based in Washington.

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