Consider that the Chinese are doing our work for us, making the things we want. Personally, I’d love to outsource my work to some underpaid political barf artist in Beijing. And the Chinese are giving us zero percent financing on the money we owe them for doing our work. On top of that the Chinese are underwriting America’s national debt. Somebody has to. Between the bailout and the stimulus and the president’s lies about freezing spending and the Republicans’ lies about helping him and the fact that we’ve all run through our savings, which we didn’t have any of to begin with, because we’re out of a job, America certainly isn’t going to do anything about America’s national debt.
Consider also the parable of Japan in the 1980s. Japan kept giving America radios, TVs, stereos, and cars and we kept giving Japan money. The Japanese didn’t want anything America produced except Bo Derek, and we didn’t even produce the valuable part—the silicon part—of that. So the Japanese decided, instead of buying anything Americans made, they’d buy America itself. They bought office complexes, hotels, resorts. They bought Pebble Beach. They bought Rockefeller Center. The Japanese bid up the price of American real estate. There was a bubble. The bubble did what bubbles do. And by the 1990s America had all the radios, TVs, stereos, and cars, and America had Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center, and America had all the money too. The Japanese had stuck their economy in a place where the rising sun never shines.
If our wonks are going to worry, they should worry about China. The Chinese have—let us not forget Tiananmen Square—worse politics than we do. If China can’t keep its economic progress going, the political consequences could be dire. Gang of Four: The Adventure Continues. Great Leap Backward.
Meanwhile, in view of China’s trade policies, what should American policy be? We might try a policy of good manners. “Thank you, China, for doing all the shit work.”
8
Gun Control
Gun ownership is crucial to the preservation of American freedoms. We may have to shoot Democrats. It happened in 1861 and it could happen again. Just kidding. Sort of. But there are other important arguments in favor of gun ownership. What with the economy being like it is, I call my .38 Special “the MasterCard of the future.”
True, guns take a dreadful toll in killings and other heinous crimes. The historical term for this is war. Compared to the amount of bloody carnage produced by men in uniforms carrying guns, America’s criminals, psychopaths, hotheads, and men “mistaking” their wives’ return from Bingo for home invasions might as well be armed with water balloons.
I was going to tally the number of wars that America has been involved in, but somewhere between Shays’s Rebellion and the Barbary Coast wars I lost count, and I was only four years into the nineteenth century. Countries have always had wars. But this country is a democracy. All our wars have been conducted by people elected or appointed through our democratic political system.
Guns don’t kill people, votes do. If we were serious about reducing American deaths and property damage we wouldn’t be arguing about gun control, we’d be arguing about vote control.
Most states already have restrictions on felons being allowed to have a vote (although they are woefully behindhand on felonious-type candidates being allowed to get a vote). Nonetheless the percentage of Americans with a vote has proliferated, doubling since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. America now has almost one vote for every U.S. citizen over the age of eighteen. Nearly half of all Americans with a vote have used it in past elections, often with tragic results. Think of the prominent Americans cut down in their prime by the vote: Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, Michael Dukakais, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, and (if you’re counting popular vote) George W. Bush in 2000. The current president of the United States has been threatened by votes aimed at him in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Virtually all of America’s votes are unregulated. Even in the few jurisdictions where strict vote control exists, such as Boston, it often goes unenforced. Witness the loss of Martha Coakley’s political life.
Of course no one wants to ban votes. Votes should remain available for sporting and recreational purposes. But certain types of votes need to be prohibited. “Assault votes,” for example, where the only purpose of the vote is to inflict harm on others. One thinks of the angry, impulsive voters of California’s eighth congressional district senselessly returning Nancy Pelosi to the House of Representatives.
Although we hear a great deal about electoral candidates paying high prices for votes, a greater danger is to be found in cheap and unreliable votes, the so-called First-Tuesday-in-November Nothing Specials. These should be outlawed, as should the importation of low-quality arms (and legs) from foreign sources. Flimsy breechloaders such as Patrick Kennedy, late of Rhode Island, come to mind. And extra penalties should be meted out for crimes committed with a vote such as the federal budget.
The League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, leaders of various get-out-the-vote campaigns, and other members of the well-financed pro-vote movement would have us believe that the “right to vote” is enshrined in American law. But constitutional scholars, especially Judge Robert Bork after a couple martinis, agree that there is no absolute constitutional right to vote. The Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-sixth amendments merely stipulate that possession of a vote cannot be denied on the basis of race, gender, failure to pay poll tax, or having pierced eyebrows, neck tattoos, listening to Adam Lambert, tweeting incessantly, and wearing Uggs. Otherwise, vote regulations are left to the states, with the Fourteenth Amendment requiring only that, to the extent states limit vote holding, their congressional representation shall be proportionally reduced. If the state of South Carolina had limited vote use to those whose spouses had been propositioned by the governor, the whole gruesome Mark Sanford scenario may never have transpired.
In fact, contrary to supposed constitutional prohibition of vote control, every state in the Union practices voter registration. From there it is a small step to requiring background checks and sensible waiting periods. (Al Gore would have survived to become a venerated ex-president—and UN special envoy to the North Pole—if Palm Beach County voters had had a chance to pause and reflect and remember who Pat Buchanan was before using their votes.)
Every vote should carry a serial number so that responsibility for harmful employment of votes can be traced. Concealed votes should be illegal. No secure society is possible when we do not know which of the people we encounter in public places might suddenly vote for Newt Gingrich.
And votes must be kept out of the hands of children. Nothing is more tragic in American life than parents who have suffered the loss of their Direct TV due to careless youthful voting on program selection. No episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody can ever replace a National League playoff. Childproof remotes are an immediate imperative.
I hope all concerned Americans will join me in this worthy, bipartisan campaign to make America vote-safe.
9
Campaign Finance Reform
People who think good thoughts have been denouncing the grievous effects of unfettered campaign spending in the United States since before the States were united. In 1759, while running for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses, George Washington was criticized for serving a quart and a half of liquor to each voter. This should tell us something about the relationship between electoral corruption and optimal political outcomes. Drunk as monkeys though they were, Virginians elected George Washington.
The most recent campaign spending issue causing thinkers of good thoughts to think their heads off is a January 21, 2010, ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justices decided—never mind what they’d decided before—that corporations, labor unions, trade associations, and organizations of writhing, naked political bedfellows can spend as much as they like trying to get elections to go to hell.
Now everyone’s in a tizzy, including the Supreme
Court justices. In the minority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our government to make... political speech a crime.”
“Today’s Supreme Court decision... is a disaster for the American people,” said Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21, a reform group that often gets called pinko.
“This is a great day for the First Amendment,” said Brooklyn Law School professor Joel M. Gora, a longtime lawyer for the ACLU, a reform group that often gets called pinko.
Voices of moderation were heard, such as that of Christopher Cotton, assistant professor of economics at the University of Miami: “Academic research has not found much of a link between increases in a candidate’s campaign spending and increases in the probability of the candidate winning the election.” Oh, shut up, voices of moderation were told.
President Obama called the Supreme Court ruling “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies...” At which point he seemed to run out of kinds of corporations that Americans are ticked at. “... and other powerful interests,” he said. Surely, if the president had thought for a moment, he would have added, “... those people who call in the middle of dinner and want you to switch cell phone services.”
The case that came before the Supreme Court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, did not in fact have its origin in anything so straightforward and sensible as, for example, JP-Morgan Chase wanting to buy Barney Frank’s congressional seat and sell it on NASDAQ. As often happens, the Supreme Court made a big constitutional decision due to a small group of nutters. A nonprofit organization, Citizens United, made a documentary titled, Hillary: The Movie, which was intended to be released on cable TV during the 2008 presidential primaries. The film—I quote the Economist—”portrays Mrs. Clinton as a lying, power-hungry viper.” The Federal Election Commission invoked the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and forbade public showing of Hillary: The Movie within thirty days of a Democratic primary. (Even though I, as an ununited citizen, was free to go on cable TV and shout at Citizens United, “How come you’re so soft on Hillary!”) Citizens United was threatened with large fines and jail terms of up to five years if the FEC ruling was violated. This sounds like the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers number 84, had warned that a First Amendment could lead to, and the Supreme Court decided not to go there.
Lefty nutters were involved as well. Emily’s List had brought a similar, if less publicized, case against the FEC in the District of Columbia Circuit Court and won. The FEC did not appeal the judgment, and in December 2009 the Justice Department announced that it didn’t feel very appealing either. The federal judge who ruled in favor of Emily’s List had been an associate White House counsel in the George W. Bush administration when the Bush administration strengthened regulations on spending by groups like Emily’s List and Citizens United. The attorney representing Emily’s List, Bob Bauer, went on to be appointed as White House counsel by Barack Obama. The Supreme Court justices had probably heard about all this.
Under progressive, populist, public-spirited Democratic presidential administrations, campaign finance reform acts were passed in 1939, 1943, 1947, and 1967. But wait. Under regressive, plutocratic, special-interest-dominated Republican presidential administrations, campaign finance reform acts were passed in 1883, 1907, 1910, 1911, 1925, 1971, 1974, and 2002. No less a mossback than Senator Barry Goldwater once cosponsored a bill to cap donations by political action committees.
There are all sorts of thinkers of good thoughts. Neither liberal nor conservative politicians seem to be able to resist the temptation to stand as mighty sequoias of rectitude amid the lowly underbrush of campaign fund-raising. Still, as ace political strategist Ralph Reed once said, “Money is like water down the side of the mountain. It will find a way to get around the trees.”
Those of us who do not think good thoughts any more often than we have to may wonder, simply, “Does campaign finance reform work?” We can let history be the judge. (I’m a great fan of “let history be the judge,” figuring that by the time Shelby Foote gets around to deciding whether or not I flunked the Breathalyzer test I’m history.) The strictest laws to date concerning electoral donations were passed in the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which went into effect after the 2002 elections. It had long been illegal for corporations, unions, trade associations, and so forth to donate directly to a political candidate. But McCain-Feingold banned so-called soft money donations as well—money given to the Republican, Democratic, or Whatever Party rather than to a particular candidate from that party. McCain-Feingold also prohibited political advertising by corporations, unions, etc., if the ads even mentioned a specific candidate, pro or con. And McCain-Feingold limited most of the rest of the material help that might be given to a political candidate. You could (the legislation originally stipulated) give a candidate $5,000 if you were a political action committee, $5,000 if you were a political party, or $2,000 if you were a human. You could still display a yard sign, assuming your home owner’s association allowed it. And Senator McCain and Senator Feingold never were able to figure out a way to prevent rich candidates from supporting themselves. Thus the first result of the McCain-Feingold Act was to cause Washington’s wise men to say, “The only way to get elected now is to have a huge Rolex or a huge Rolodex.”45
Much of the McCain-Feingold balloon of good thoughts has been punctured by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling. But we still have the examples of the pre-McCain-Feingold 2000 and 2002 federal elections versus the post-McCain-Feingold 2004 federal elections to show us how—if not whether—campaign finance reform works.
In 2004, for the first time in history, the average cost of an election victory in the House of Representatives exceeded $1 million. The cost of victorious Senate elections rose by 47 percent from 2002 to 2004. Total spending on presidential, Senate, and House races was almost $4 billion in 2004 compared to approximately $3 billion in 2000. So the McCain-Feingold Act was a failure. Unless it wasn’t. After all, Americans were 33 percent more politically involved in 2004 than they had been in 2000, if we measure involvement in dollars. And the fact that an extra billion in campaign funds was raised, despite onerous new restrictions on fund-raising, is proof of the ingenuity and flexibility that makes American democracy so—corruptly—successful.
Has the Supreme Court made this electoral bettering or worsening worse or better? We won’t know until there’s been a great festival of litigation. For the moment corporations, unions et al. are still prevented from giving directly to candidates, and PAC, party, and individual donations remain capped. But a few things are clear. Fortunately we don’t have to rely on good thoughts to know what they are. Some real thinking has been done. On the same day that the Supreme Court decision was announced, Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg and other scary-smart people at the lobbying firm of Patton Boggs circulated a memo titled “A drastically altered landscape.”
The Patton Boggs conclusions: Republicans are about to get swamped because of an “extremely well-funded union effort that gives over 98 percent of its funds to Democrats.” Democrats are sunk because “Democrats see the size of corporate treasuries compared to unions and believe they are about to get swamped.” Political parties are on the rocks because “with the limits on the amounts and sources of funds they can accept the parties will be bit players compared to outside groups.” Nutters are washed up because 527s (the groups named after the section of the tax code that allows nutters to go nuts tax free) have “been rendered obsolete.” (Say bon voyage to nasty TV ads calling a decorated war veteran presidential candidate a swift boat goldbrick and hysterical Web sites claiming
that George W. Bush’s father was snapped by paparazzi lolling topless on the deck of King Faisal’s yacht.) Candidates are rudderless because “limits... on the size of contributions to candidates place them at a significant disadvantage compared to corporations and unions, [therefore] controlling the issues they want to run on will become a real challenge.” And candidates running against incumbents are lost at sea because “corporations’ political giving tends to be incumbent heavy.”
Here is something that makes Republicans, Democrats, political parties in general, nutters, politicians, and would-be politicians walk the plank. One begins to see the Supreme Court’s point.
The situation reminds me of a debate about term limits that Cato president Ed Crane and I have been having for twenty-two years. Ed favors term limits. I say, “It’s a good thought, Ed. But do you want a dog that knows where the bones are buried, or do you want a dog that will dig up the whole yard?”
To which Ed replies, “P.J., there’s one thing I can tell you about term limits. Every politician hates them.”
It’s an argument I can’t refute.
Is there too much money in politics? There are some 230 million Americans of voting age. The 2008 presidential campaigns spent about $1.4 billion. Would you have sold your vote for $6.16? (I would have, if I could have simultaneously voted against Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, but Ron Paul never coughed up the six bucks. Besides, Ron, if you’re going to be as libertarian as all that, you need to get some tattoos or something.)
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