Making Elections Fair (The Nation)

[marmar]

comment | posted April 12, 2007 (April 30, 2007 issue)
Making Elections Fair

Ari Berman

The modern campaign finance system is badly broken, if not on the verge of total collapse. The 2008 cycle promises to be the most expensive in history, as the fundraising numbers in the first quarter of this year demonstrated. One presidential contender after another is declining matching funds and raising as much money as possible. Michael Toner, former head of the Federal Election Commission, predicts that the two major party nominees will raise $500 million apiece. John McCain has abandoned the cause of reform he once so loudly trumpeted; Barack Obama refers to the amount of money he's raising as "obscene."

But these disturbing developments, rather than discouraging reformers, have only strengthened their resolve. The answer to the current problem is more, not less, public funding, they say. That's why Illinois's senior Senator, Dick Durbin--the number-two Democrat in the Senate--has introduced the first bipartisan bill to publicly finance federal races, modeled after successful "clean election" laws at the state and local levels. Durbin's bill won't stop the presidential money chase. But it would transform the way Congressional races are fought and won, laying down the most significant campaign finance reforms to date. Obama has signed on as a co-sponsor, calling the bill "a very intelligent approach."

The Congressional picture is almost as bad as the presidential marathon--and affects far more candidates. The cost of a top-tier Senate campaign has doubled in the past four years, with an average total price tag of $34 million for the two leading candidates. The beneficiaries of such an arrangement are the lobbyists, wealthy individuals and corporations that can write check after check, and incumbents, who rarely face stiff challenges anymore. Other winners include the TV stations and campaign consultants who make big bucks off campaign advertising. "We are stuck in a terrible, corrupting system," Durbin says. Politicians, Representative Barney Frank likes to joke, "are the only human beings in the world who are expected to take thousands of dollars from perfect strangers on important matters and not be affected by it."
...(snip)...

Theodore Roosevelt first floated the idea of public financing in his 1907 State of the Union address. Durbin-Specter is not the first federal public financing bill to be unveiled. Senators John Kerry and the late Paul Wellstone introduced a similar plan in 1997 that went nowhere. It took seven years to approve McCain-Feingold. Durbin says that passing his bill, over the objections of TV stations and well-funded incumbents, among others, will be even tougher. "We're not talking about part of the system," Durbin says. "We're talking about the system." ......

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070430/berman