Campaign Finance Reform

A friend of mine last week quite adamantly claimed that campaign finance reform is the one overriding issue that we should all focus on, to the exclusion of other issues. For him the goal has to be to take money out of politics. Without that nothing else can be accomplished.

To this I present a syllogism:

Politics, most generally, is the competition for power in government…or business…or love.

Money is power.

Taking money out of politics is an absurdity; it amounts to telling politicians to compete for power without power (money).

Unfortunately it is not just my friend who advocates trying to take money out of politics. Lawrence Lessig has recently written an entire book (Republic, Lost) developing this position. He builds his case on the basis of the notion of dependence corruption. As he defines it, “an institution can be corrupted … when individuals within that institution become dependent upon an influence that distracts them from the intended purpose of the institution. The distracting dependency corrupts the institution.  Lessig, Lawrence (2011-10-05). Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (p. 15). Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition.’ Given this definition, it is not hard to demonstrate that congressmen are corrupt. I have reservations about his use of corruption as the basis for his argument that campaign finance reform is necessary, but his actual proposals are what are important. As it turns out, he is not so much arguing that we should remove money from politics as he is arguing that the money for political campaigns should be derived from individuals as part of their payment of taxes, in a program administered by the government.

The problem I have with his proposal is that he treats political parties as no more than labels individuals use to check off where they want their money to go. The candidates become central, thus continuing the push to eliminate parties from any role in the political process. To me this is a complete misunderstanding of the political process.