WASHINGTON, June 14, 2007
Confessions Of A Neo-Mugwump
Dick Meyer Considers A New Approach To Campaign Finance Reform
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Photo
(AP)
I've just been called a neo-Mugwump and I don't like it one bit.
Actually, I haven't been called a neo-Mugwump to my face (I guess I don't move in the right circles). But people of my ilk have been.
Neo-Mugwump is the term Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol used in her terrific 2003 book, "Diminished Democracy," to describe those who are always trying to "reform" politics to make it cleaner and more professional. Neo-Mugwumps like campaign and lobbying reform and they don't like PACs, fundraisers, fat cats and special interest groups.
I've been a classic neo-Mugwump for my whole life. But I'm ready to throw in the towel and give it all up. I think. I'm pretty sure. Maybe. In any case, it's all because of Professor Skocpol.
I was in high school during Watergate and started reporting on politics in Washington ten years later. I always believed that any political reform short of public financing of campaigns would be imperfect, messy but still worthwhile. I spent a lot time reporting on abuses of the campaign finance system; there was a lot to report. Same with lobbying.
I certainly believed in the idea of reforming the system, even if I was skeptical, even cynical, about the efficacy of reform. I had seen unintended consequences turn several high-minded reforms into deforms. I had observed that the lobbyists and political evil-doers were wilier, better financed and more plentiful than the Hill staffers who wrote the laws and the agency workers who try, I guess, to enforce them.
Still, I thought having less money, not more, floating around campaigns and lobbying couldn't do anything but help. I've not been at all persuaded by the Supreme Court's argument in the most important campaign finance case, Buckley v. Valeo, that money is equivalent to speech in politics and so should be regulated only with great reluctance. Cleaner is better.
Professor Skocpol thinks this attitude "treats politics as if it were something dirty and implicitly hold up the ideal of an educated elite safely above and outside of politics." She named people who think this way after the Mugwumps, high-minded Republicans who refused to support the GOP candidate in the election of 1884, James G. Blaine ("Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine.")
The main theme of "Diminishing Democracy" is to show how large, national chapter organizations – groups that tended to be made up of active volunteers from all classes – have been replaced by "professionally managed advocacy groups without chapters or members."
You know who they are - the groups that stuff your mailbox and call during supper. Skocpol believes these groups have reduced participation in civic life, limited opportunities for people from different class and communities to work together on important things and generally diminished our democracy.
One of her ideas to improve things is let non-profits back into politics and elections. The tax laws intentionally make it very hard for non-profits and membership groups to get involved in campaigns and elections. In the spirit of neo-Mugwumpism, it was decided that non-profits shouldn't be "partisan" or give directly to candidates and campaigns.
Skocpol says this is the opposite of what we need, that "the United States should repeal or modify all kinds of rules designed to create firewalls between partisan and nonpartisan activities."
Instead of firewalls, she argues, allow organized groups to campaign and contribute in elections. Stop trying to insulate one world from the other. Let people who are civic-minded get involved in politics through the groups they are active in, if that's what they want to do. It is also possible that in doing this, the business world would actually have more and better competition for political influence.
More broadly speaking, perhaps a cure for today's unimpressive political situation is not less politics, but more politics. The sanitary view of politics is snobbish and wrongheaded.
Having broken my share of stories about mini-campaign finance scandals, I now think they are not nearly as big a threat to effective government as I used to think. The bigger problem is personnel. So many aspects of politics today, especially the fundraising, are so unpleasant and so undignified, that lots of fine people wouldn't ever consider running for office.
Letting non-profits be partisan and political could bring great people into the process. Letting them spend money freely could even make fundraising less onerous. In the same spirit, we should probably let individuals give a lot more than they can now.
This is reformer sacrilege, I know. But maybe the way to repair failed regulation and reform isn't with more regulation and reform, but less. Perhaps the political marketplace should be more open. The current closed system is losing trust and legitimacy steadily and has been since the 1970s.
So that makes me a reformed neo-Mugwump. I think.
If you prefer e-mail to public comments, complaints or arguments, send them along to Against the Grain. We may occasionally publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.
By Dick Meyer © MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I have a better idea, make a two hour program about each candidate, in which the background, record, and platform is made public, feature one per night, repeat after three months, then have a series of ten four-hour debates on the issues with all candidates from both sides taking questions from a cross section of income levels and ethnicities.
Then ban political contributions altogether, and limit active campaigning to the last month before the election.
brianbwb's closer to right. Get the money out of it (or at least level the financial playing field) and shorten the campaign to something under a year and a half.
And you know what? The candidates might enter this system kicking and screaming but after one election I bet they'd love it. Then they could quit pandering to the big-money interests and campaign honestly. It would also free up those incumbents who are now dialing for dollars everywhere to go back to Congress and do the job we elected them to do. (Barack Obama, are you listening?)
Money in politics is like money anywhere else. It's use is market driven. So regulate the market, not the fundraising. The sellers in the market [including CBS] are the major part of the problem.
That's the second stupidest judicial ruling in the history of this country. The first was giving corporations the same rights as people.
That's the second stupidest judicial ruling in the history of this country. The first was giving corporations the same rights as people."
Posted by omega39
It's not stupid, it's corrupt and moraly wrong. This didn't happen by accident or as a result of stupidity. AND it's being promoted by the party of "Christian family values".
On one condition - do away with NON-PROFIT classifications altogether. If religions want to preach politics then its NOT religion is it! Religion is big business anyway.
Posted by sparks224
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So do you have problems with family values? Or do you have problems with Christians. Or do you have problems with anyone who promotes family values? Or do you just have problems?
George Sorros and his cronies were successful in taking away many of the first amendment rights a few years ago. The media maintained their rights and thus did not loudly broadcast the offense against the American people at large. There are wealthy people with little or no scruples who will do what they can to give themselves more power.
I agree in part with brianwb. Let us make it a more structured process. Have unbiased groups (groups for checks and balances) make factual documentaries on each candidate. Show the facts on their pasts, what they have done and what they believe in. Then have a series of debates that are more structure than soapbox. Cut through the special interest and corporate buying of candidates.
I have a problem with people who promote corruption while claiming to be for "Christian family values".
Stop all your whining about George Soros, you're giving him way too much credit anyway, the right is financed by Corporate America, and all you can do is cry about George Soros. What about Michael Moor? Isn%u2019t he a boogey man too?
Your articles are getting alittle weird and hard to follow. Who are you hangin out with these days ? Back to basics.
If public funds are used to offset corporate contributions, they may lose some of their clout. We can match all the private contributions with public funding for candidates and campaigns.
As the laws are written now, there are lots of strings attached to getting public funds. The strings that are attached to private funding become apparent after they are elected.
We do not have a 1 person = 1 vote democracy.
We have a 1 dollar = 1 vote democracy.
Did the founding fathers intend for it to be this way? No, of course not, the system has been completely corrupted.
And the Media doesn't dare bite the hand that feeds them.
Money doesn't buy you freedom. Money can in fact, buy you your misery! Don't limit .. ANYTHING!
I agree with your approach. With the way recent elections have been going, candidates better start lining up for 2012,2016 and 2020. Elections by themselves are becoming even bigger business. Elections are becoming such a farce. Buying political influence leads to nothing but corruption. Can we rightly say that isn't happening this very moment?
You have the right idea, the only reason I'd push for more than 90 days is to give the public time to absorb information, to see who waffles and who has principles, and to allow light of a little fact-checking to investigate and expose the liars amongst them (or who lies the least).
I'm thinking 120 days, with Saturdays and Sundays off limits, and no midnight infomercials (those things should be banned anyway...)
Since the Supreme Court has sold us down the river, ignore them. Then whoever spends millions of their own money to supplement the allocated share of media presence is automatically disqualified, cause no one does that without expecting a profit.
So Supreme Court, if you want me to believe that bull, then pay me.
Money is not equivalent to speech, try to buy a hamburger with words. In politics, hold up a $1,000 bill, say absolutely nothing, and see if you get your hamburger.
Money is corruption in politics, as it influences the receiver to make decisions that are anti-human, and makes Supreme Court justices redefine the English language
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by sjc_1
June 15, 2007 3:47 PM EDT
- I believe in Public Money for Public Office. Do away with all private contributions. It is just legalized bribery and a way to buy influence. The people that take the money are guilty of influence peddling. There is no "smoking gun", just a nod and a wink. It would be hard to believe that the PACs raise all that money and expect nothing in return.
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See all 24 CommentsThe oil companies certainly expected something from Junior when they backed him in both the primary and general elections. They got one heck of a return on their investment too. The price of oil has tripled, their profits have soared to over $100 billion per year and they now are in line to control all the oil in Iraq.