- Last year some election watchers made a bold prediction
that this presidential election would set a record: the first half billion
dollar campaign in hard money alone. It turns out the projections were
way too modest.
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- Here are the numbers so far. As of last month, according
to the latest campaign finance data, George Bush has raised $243m, and
spent $209m. John Kerry has raised $304m and spent $182m.
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- According to federal election rules, the Kerry campaign
can only spend another $75m between the day of his nomination and election
day, capping his total at around 250 million. The $75m limit only applies
to Bush once he accepts the nomination on September 2, allowing him to
max out at around $325m. So the combined total of hard campaign dollars
alone will crash through the half billion dollar mark.
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- But that's before we even get to soft money contributions,
where no caps apply. This year independent soft money organisations from
both parties have so far spent $212m. The so-called 527s can keep raising
and spending without limit through November 2, putting the country on track
for its first billion dollar election - roughly double the money spent
in 2000- itself a record year.
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- The exponential rise of campaign dollars is ironically
due to a piece of legislation that was supposed to shrink the obscene amount
of money thrown at elections. The McCain-Feingold bill of 2002 had lofty
intentions, some of which were realised.
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- No longer can huge corporations write six or seven figure
cheques directly to candidates in the expectation of a quid pro quo. The
strict limits on individual contributions flowing to them has democratised
that part of the campaign system. Witness the Howard Dean phenomenon where
hundreds of thousands of people each gave two thousand dollars or less
to create a popular bandwagon.
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- However the very wealthy have exploited the yawning loophole
in the law which allows unlimited money to flow to organisations independent
of the campaigns, but working parallel to them.
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- As these groups are forbidden by law to advocate for
a particular candidate, they tend toward negative advertising. So not only
has the McCain-Feingold bill failed to stop the flow of money to elections,
it has resulted in much nastier campaigning. And when a campaign gets nasty
that just encourages more spending.
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- We entered the vortex of this spending spree about two
weeks ago when an "independent" group began airing the infamous
Swift Boat ad calling John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam a sham. Despite Kerry's
initial reluctance to break into his campaign coffers in response, hard
reality has prevailed, turning the traditionally quiet month of August
from the lull before the storm to the storm before the storm.
-
- The fallout from the Swift Boat ad has been intructive
for voters, because it exploded the fallacy that soft money organisations
operate independently of hard money campaigns. This week Democrats pointed
out that George Bush's senior campaign lawyer, Benjamin Ginsburg, had been
advising "Swift Boat Veterans for truth", the group that financed
the ad, forcing him to resign.
-
- But before Democrats get too righteous on this issue
they should remember that a similar nexus of coordination exists on their
side too. Jim Jordan - who until November last year was John Kerry's election
campaign manager - is now strategising for the biggest independent slush
fund of all on the Democratic side- the Media Fund.
-
- In fact Democrats caught onto the idea of the shadow
election campaign much earlier than Republicans. The first nine of the
top ten contributors to 527s this year are Democrats. Republicans are catching
up fast, however. Carl Rove has sent the word out to big name visitors
to New York next week that they will be expected to open their chequebooks
in an effort to match if not dwarf the Democrats' war chest.
-
- All of which means that the electorate will be treated
to an avalanche of campaign ads- most of them negative- between now and
November. Will the important issues of the day be obscured by personal
character attacks? Yes. But let's not pretend that any change in the finance
laws would radically influence the level of political discourse for the
better.
-
- The first amendment thankfully protects the rights of
everyone to say pretty much what they like about anyone else. Voters are
also free to draw their own conclusions, and if they think that a negative
attack is unjustified they will punish the practitioner.
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- In a free market, money is the most fungible commodity.
The role of big money in the pursuit of the world's biggest political prize
cannot be curtailed. But it hasn't diminished the role of the voter. They
will get to decide which candidate's half a billion dollars was a worthwhile
investment and whose was a colossal waste.
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- - Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/
comment/story/0,14259,1292193,00.html
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