ON the question of public funding of presidential campaigns, we Democrats who strongly support Sen. Barack Obama‘s candidacy and who previously supported limits on campaign spending and who haven’t objected to Obama’s opting out of the presidential funding system face an awkward fact: Either we are hypocrites, or we were wrong to support such limitations in the first place.
The next time we speak of the virtue of level playing fields or state our strong belief that democracy can’t survive in the modern age unless big money is taken out of campaigns, we’ll be counting on our audience’s forgetting our silence this year, when the free market was flowing in our direction.
A hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue – who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we’re doing now.
Former Sen. Wendell Ford once gave me good advice about public issues and votes: “If it takes you more than 10 minutes to explain why you voted a particular way, you probably voted wrong.” It would take me a lot longer than those 10 minutes to explain why I’m not outraged by Obama’s decision to opt out of funding – which has given him a decisive spending advantage over Sen. John McCain.
Actually, I could keep my answer under 10 minutes if I were willing to answer that it’s now to my advantage to act in contradiction to my previously stated beliefs. All I would need to say is that, on the issue of public funding in 2008, I was a hyprocrite.
Of course, there’s another option: Admit I was wrong on such limitations in the first place. And that’s exactly what I’m likely to do.
For the facts in evidence seem to make the case that this presidential campaign is the most exciting, most closely watched and most expensive in my lifetime. That is, there seems to be no correlation between the amount of money spent and disillusionment among the voters. Indeed, the contrary appears to be true.
The argument that money is corrupting our democratic system is as old as our first election. And it is an argument usually made by liberals, who have proposed various interventions in the marketplace of political ideas.
The bedrock federal law here was enacted in 1971 and has been challenged time and again by individuals and groups who view such limits as a violation of the First Amendment. On each of the several occasions when the Supreme Court has ruled against the law, Congress came back with further modifications to the statute.
The most recent effort was in 2002, when Sen. McCain led a bipartisan effort to “clean up the system.” Last year, the high court overturned the key provision of that law, which restricted individuals and groups from engaging in issue campaigns.
There is great irony here, since the key vote in that 5-4 decision was Justice Sam Alito – just the kind of “nonactivist” judge that Sen. McCain has promised to nominate.
So maybe I was simply wrong about placing limits on spending and providing public monies in exchange for adhering to these limits. Of course, it’s possible that I’m making a virtue out of a necessity – since my candidate is now winning in part because, by opting out of the system, he has more money to spend.
In the short term, I’m sad to report that hypocrite is a more accurate label. In the long term, perhaps this will be the moment that causes me to change my views. It certainly feels better than remaining a hypocrite forever.
Bob Kerrey, president of the New School, served as a US senator and governor of Nebraska.