Entry Fee for ’08 Presidential Race around $100 Million

In order to be considered a “serious” candidate for the presidency next time around, a politician is going to need to raise about $100 million before calendar 2008 begins. Combined, those running for the GOP and Democratic Party’s nomination will spend over $1 billion. That’s rather a lot to spend for a job that pays $400,000 a year. Still, a billion dollars for a campaign works out to be just over $3.30 per American. As George Will notes, that is less than Americans spend on chewing gum every year.

Ever since the courts held (Buckley v. Valeo) that spending money on political campaigns was a form of politically protected speech, the price for a political campaign has soared. A great many, especially on the left, decry this as a government for sale. And it is to a degree. Mary Boyle of Common Cause explained in today’s New York Daily News, “The system is broken. Until you cut the dependence between people who are running for office and the special interests who are raising money for them, you are going to have public policy that favors the special interests.”

However, their preferred solution, to have taxpayers fund campaigns and to prevent others from spending their own money as they wish, smacks of a statism gone berserk. Moreover, a special interest is really merely a segment of the electorate engaged in a political effort to have its favored policy enacted. ExxonMobile is a special interest when it comes to energy policy, but so are 7-year-olds and their parents when it comes to education policy. It is false that "special interests" only exist in the third person; they are first person plural.

Much of the money spent goes in TV ads, and here, there is room for reform. TV and radio operate in the publicly owned airwaves. Stations are licensed by the government, and conditions can be put on those licenses. Requiring free time to candidates as part of that permission top broadcast can help. However, this election the internet ads that YouTube and similar sites will show will also undermine this. Why spend millions for an ad to run when one can put it on a website and get news people to talk about it on TV? It’s the old British ploy of holding a press conference to unveil a new poster. After the poster appears on the “Nine O’Clock News” and in the Sun, why put it on a billboard?

Besides, it isn’t the money that is the problem. It’s the secrecy around the money. If a mining company wants to strip mine an environmentally sensitive place, it has but to quietly donate some money to a congressman, and permission gets slipped into an Iraq war funding bill. Imagine, though, if every deposit to a campaign had to be posted on the internet within 24 hours of the bank accepting it. Suddenly the quiet is gone. Corruption is difficult when the sun shines on the act.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home