View From The Left Coast

Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, more and more political
figures are being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, like that
classic Abscam figure in the 70’s immortalized on video taking a bribe
and laughingly stuffing his pockets with cash. But when even the most
legal and “mainstream� methods of influence peddling, like Halliburton’s
hiring Dick Cheney to be its CEO with absolutely no experience working
for, much less running, a large corporation, are looked at carefully,
one begins to see that every $25,000 given to guys like Abramoff
for “face time� with the President is laid out for a reason: it gets
results. Cheney was the best investment Halliburton ever made.

Yes, Clinton did it too: $300,000 donated to Hillary's run for the Senate bought
an "indulgence": a twilight pardon for a convicted mafioso.

Some years ago, when I was a reporter covering a race for county
supervisor, donations to a local candidate started coming in from other
states. Someone called an Iowa donor and asked why she had contributed
to a man for whom she couldn’t even vote. She’d never heard of him, but
her son, an attorney for a developer looking to build a 1500 home
subdivision in the supervisor’s area, definitely had. Every secretary
and paralegal in that law office (in another county) also contributed
the maximum the law allowed, and that supervisor worked very hard to
make sure the project got special treatment.

Most people would like to think “persons� like Enron, Maxxam and
Halliburton give money to politicians because they believe in the
candidates’ philosophy, or buy TV ads to amuse the viewers. Americans
freely expressing their beliefs.

Uh-uh.

Every time these folks put out the money, they get what they pay for.
People like Ken Lay and Charles Hurwitz aren’t stupid: they invest again
and again because for every quid, there’s a quo. Lay commits the
grandest fraud in US history, everybody knows it, but four years later
is he in prison? Has he even been tried? No. And No. And who did he
spend millions getting “elected�? As Deep Throat said, follow the money.

There IS another way to do this. If we really wanted to, we could outlaw
“lobbyists� and “gifts� to elected officials, or, if we were thinking of
getting radical, limit campaigns, as they do in England. Hell, why not limit
campaigns to a series of debates, sponsored by the League of Women
Voters. No ads at all!

I think that's more what Madison and Hamilton had in mind.