Because You Never Asked

 

(5/07, Spain)

     Through my many years of travel and observation, I’ve witnessed the electoral process of a number of countries, live and in color. England, Mexico, Greece and Spain are the ones I remember with precision. The most impressive political gathering I’ve ever seen occurred in Athens, probably around 1970. The campaign had reached its final weekend and each of the 3 major political formations had their day in Constitution Square, the nerve-center of the city. In those days, the Communists were the not too distant third political force in the country and the location of the cheap hotel (dump) I was staying in probably had much to do with why their demonstration has had such a lasting impact upon me. It lay right on the route between the famous gathering place and the humble areas most of the people with this political persuasion came from. All day long, on the day set aside for them, they came pouring out of their neighborhoods, dressed in an endless river of red, festooned with signs and placards, hammers and sickles, in a festive, raucous display of popular pride and solidarity. Many of them came in 3 generations worth of family, the children running and skipping along with their parents, the very youngest riding the shoulders of their fathers, with grandma and grandpa hobbling along as best they could. The closest thing I could compare it to in America might be a football Saturday with the Crimson Tide of Alabama.

     Spain, given the consistency and longevity with which I’ve been coming to this country, is the foreign nation whose political life is most known to me. I’ve been witness to a number of its electoral burlesques (I define all such processes, anywhere they happen, with just this word) and am about to live another in its entirety, something a foreign visitor to the United States could almost never say. For a foreigner to actually live one of our electoral “burlesques” in its entirety would cost at least 2 years of their life.

     And that is the reason I’m writing this essay.

     The great disease that is eating away at the American political process is the astronomic amount of money needed to run for office. Money in such voluminous quantities can only be gotten, in the end, from donors with gigantic sums to give. Yours or my $25 gift, regardless of the diffusion of such a “grass roots” remedy, eventually ain’t gonna cut it. The solvency of an American politician’s campaign, given the ever escalating fortune necessary to compete, will depend heavily on these “non grass roots” sources, who are going to expect some kind of bang for their buck. As a result, these big donors are who our politicians end up working for and not the rest of us.

     This is not complicated. What we are trying to do here is not a cure for cancer. There are remedies as simple as taking lots of liquids and staying in bed that could go a long way towards curing this disease that has made our political process so sick. The fact that it hasn’t been done is vivid proof that our political-financial elites are simply not interested in doing it. In spite of all their blah-blah-blah, they like things just the way they are.

     As the title of this essay suggests, this is the fourth time I’ve tried to cure this disease (see essays “Campaign Reform”, “Campaign Reform Revisited”, and “Campaign Reform III”). The first one set forth the idea of prohibiting political advertising on TV and radio. The second further delved into this idea. The third was a strident rebuttal to those who’d say such an idea is “unconstitutional”. This essay will now postulate another simple home remedy that could go a long way towards curing the Big Money disease.

     It is not the purpose of this exercise to compare the various forms of government around the world that are loosely described as democracies. Regardless of whether they are parliamentary or executive forms of governmental vaudeville; regardless of whatever local ticks are in place in the great gear works of their governing machinery, they all seem to have similar forms of influence peddling, similar bouts with corruption, and an electorate of average Joes with comparable amounts of naivety and ability or lack thereof to make a difference. You could take any politician from any of these “democracies”, put him or her in any of these places, and they’d look and act almost exactly the same everywhere.

     This is now the most prevalent form of bull currently sold by the world’s most dominant elites. But it’s potential to be better exists, and no place more than in that great bastion of democracy, the United States.

     The United States seems to be an exception with regard to an idea that could be helpful in curing the Big Money disease. I know of no democratic government abroad whose electoral campaigns are not strictly limited, by law, with regard to length. Obviously, there is some grey area in defining what is and is not “campaigning”, but, in general, the beginning of the real campaign is as recognizable as Opening Day of the baseball season. Just 3 days ago, as I write, this year’s electoral season in Spain began with a tradition similar to what college basketball fans in America know as “midnight madness”. At 12:00 AM on the opening day, all the candidates will gather at strategic locations and put the ceremonial first political posters up on the wall. All this is heavily covered by the means of communication, and, as they say in horse racing, “they’re off!”

     Whenever and wherever I’ve been privy to such a process, the electoral campaign hovered between 2 weeks and one months duration. Strangely enough, and surely due to the concentrated efforts of all involved, this seemingly limited time frame was always more than enough. Just how long does it take for a politician to make his or her point? But there was also another positive residual effect born from this restricted duration: it helps focus the voters, whose attention span and patience is not threatened by an overdose of this --- I’m thinking of the correct word --- “crap”.

     But the real point, especially with regard to the United States, is such a framework’s ability to lower costs. The presidential campaign in the United States has been fully armed and on the battlefield for months now and the election is not until November --- of 2008! For the most part, the candidates have declared and mobilized their troops. If they are to stay on the battlefield, they are going to have to continually fund their efforts. This is becoming more an obscenity than a democracy. In spite of all the talk about doing something to harness these expenses, I doubt if there’s been a national election campaign in the United States since WWII that hasn’t broken the record for money spent.

     The United States differs from the other so called democracies in one other fundamental area: the way each political Party chooses its candidates. The “primary” system, used in America to give the “rank and file” more of a say as to who represents their Party, is not used in other places. In Spain, there is an apparatus within each Party that decides these questions. At first glance, the American system would seem more representative of the popular will, as it was surely meant to be. But there is great irony here; the primary system creates an almost endless campaign environment that increases costs dramatically. Only those with huge financial backers can continue playing in a sport of this nature.

     I further suggest that the more democratic aspects of the primary system are somewhat of an illusion anyway. It is much more the Party apparatus that decides its candidates than any “grass roots” constituency. Some recent history demonstrates this:

     In 2000, George W. was the obvious choice of the Republican Party apparatus. Early in the primary process his campaign sputtered and stalled a number of times, especially in New Hampshire, where a Jon McCain at the top of his game took him down. The Republican “rank and file” could have easily gone in another direction, but the real power brokers had their man. It wasn’t long before McCain had been bitch slapped into submission and endorsing W. for president.

     In 2006, the Democratic incumbent senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, was the Party’s man. In an almost unprecedented popular rebellion, an anti-war candidate stole the primary from him (with gobs of his own money). But the Party establishment did little more than pay lip service to his candidacy without truly availing him of their material and logistical help. Lieberman, running as an Independent, and probably with the funds the “renegade” candidate should have been privy to, won easily.

     As I write, Hillary Clinton is the recognizable choice of the Democratic Party’s internal apparatus. The political climate in America, due to the void left by the incompetence of the current government, is highly unsettled. Her defeat is not impossible, but still unlikely, regardless of any grass roots unrest out there caused by her initial cowardly support for the Iraqi war. If it does happen, it will probably weaken the Party considerably.

     In this kind of political climate, where the “powers to be” are still in control regardless of the primary system, one has to wonder if the expense of such a system is worth whatever “democratic” aspects it brings with it. Without this “marathonian” primary system, a Party could present its product to the electorate in a much more efficient way. For a traditionally “center-left” Party like the Democrats, whose philosophical underpinnings can be seriously compromised while groveling for Big Money, a much cheaper format could help maintain the purity of its message, a message that might reflect its rank and file more than it does now. Somewhat confirming this thought is the arthritic response of the Party apparatus to the virulent opposition of its average voter to the war in Iraq.

     In this whole series of essays dealing with campaign reform, the central idea has been to not set any limits on spending (an almost impossible task), but rather, to provide a format that makes large sums of money irrelevant. A formally delineated, legally defined short electoral campaign, is an excellent step in that direction. Obviously, there are wrinkles to iron out, but this is far from being a radical idea. The United States is the only democracy in the world without such concepts in place. There are “constitutional” questions as well as trying to do away with a primary system we have become habitually addicted to. But the way forward has never been a well constructed interstate free of traffic. It is a rugged path covered with underbrush that has always had to be cleared and made passable. It is only a question of will.