Election law scholar Rick Pildes has two excellent posts explaining why the "Millionaires Amendment," which the Supreme Court struck down on Thursday was probably enacted by Congress for the purpose of protecting incumbent legislators against challengers (see here and here). As Pildes explains, laws restricting the ability of independently wealthy candidates to spend their own money on their campaigns benefits incumbents because they usually have much better access to other sources of funding than challengers do. Thus, even independently wealthy incumbents rarely need to spend their own money on reelection campaigns. By contrast, thanks to the existence of laws restricting the amounts which people can contribute to the campaigns of others, independently wealthy challengers spending their own money are "[e]very incumbent's nightmare" because they can spend a lot more than challengers who must rely on difficult-to-raise outside contributions. Pildes compiles some impressive evidence (including statements by John McCain) indicating that Congress inserted the Millionaires Amendment into the McCain-Feingold Act for the specific purpose of reducing the risk of their own defeat.
I. Legislators' Incentives to Enact Incumbent-Protection Laws.
However, Pildes seems to believe that the Millionaires Amendment is at least somewhat exceptional, and that many if not most other campaign finance laws might promote political competition rather than undermining it. I find that conclusion implausible. After all, campaign finance laws can only be enacted if they have the support of incumbent legislators. And incumbents have very strong incentives to support "reforms" that entrench them against potential challengers and oppose any reforms that might make the challengers' task easier. Even if - in the abstract - it is possible to design a system of campaign finance regulation that creates a better electoral process than that which would exist in the absence of regulation, it is highly unlikely that real-world legislators would vote for such a system. Instead, they are likely to support reforms that entrench incumbents and oppose any that might have the opposite effect.
Allowing incumbent legislators to write campaign finance laws is somewhat like appointing a committee of wolves to develop new security arrangements for chicken coops. Even if the current security system is flawed, the wolves will probably make it worse rather than better. After all, the wolves' main interest is ensuring their own ability to gobble up the chickens, a goal that would be frustrated by the installation of better security measures.
II. How Political Ignorance Exacerbates the Problem.
Pildes might argue that this danger can be defused by attentive voters. If voters pay close attention to the details of campaign finance laws and punish those legislators who vote for incumbent-entrenching proposals, Congress might have an incentive to promote "good" reform laws and abjure policies like the Millionaires' Amendment. Unfortunately, we know that most citizens have little or no knowledge of politics and public policy and that it is actually rational for them to remain ignorant. It is highly unlikely that any but a tiny fraction of Americans have the kind of detailed knowledge of campaign finance law necessary to be able to tell the difference between potentially beneficial reforms and incumbent-protection scams. Thus, it should be easy for incumbents to dress up laws that handicap challengers as public-spirited efforts to "take money out of politics." The "Millionaires' Amendment" itself is probably an example of this. After all, it looks superficially like an attempt to diminish the political influence of the wealthy for the benefit of the poor and middle class, and was sold that way to the public.
If voters were knowledgeable enough to tell the difference between "good" campaign finance laws and Trojan horses that benefit incumbents, there would probably be no need to worry about campaign finance in the first place. After all, a knowledgeable and attentive electorate could easily learn about the candidates and their policies from sources other than the candidates' 30 second sound bites and ads. For example, they could read newspaper reports, academic studies on the merits of opposing policy proposals, magazine articles, and so on. Campaign finance only matters because most voters are ignorant, and don't pay much attention to politics - thereby turning campaign ads into important sources of information because they are among the few such sources that many voters will actually see. But that very ignorance makes it highly unlikely that voters will know enough to punish politicians who enact incumbent-protecting campaign finance reforms.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Rick Pildes on The Danger of Incumbent-Protecting Campaign Finance Laws:
- Why Campaign Finance Laws are Likely to be Incumbent-Protection Laws:
The vast majority are against them, which is why nearly all existing term limits laws were enacted by popular referendum.
It just isn't reasonable to assume they will.
Given a choice between security devised by the wolves, and none at all, go with none at all every time.
Put another way, if The People wanted campaign finance reform The People would have to write it themselves, right?
Fine idea. So, just how am I supposed to practice it? I am not alone in living in an area where all the officials on offer, from mayor up, are interchangeable with no differences other than party affiliation: admittedly, a large part of it is because offering an alternative even on something like on which days to collect trash is seen as a surely losing idea. So, it`s pin-a-tail-on-the-(picture of your choice here) again.
And no, I am not about to offer up my life to running for office myself. At most, prehaps for a position in a party's most local committee, and probably not that. Am I a slacker? You betcha, if the alternative is spending at least ten hours a week because of some "office" I hold communicating with people of hopefully similar outlooks - I do that via blogs, responses to news organizations, etc.
"The rules reflect the interests of those who made them."
The headline to this post says:
Simply, I am not surprised the campaign finance reform is turning out to be just that. Plus, anytime you hear the word reform, you should know right then something stinks, i.e tax reform = raising taxes
link?
[Important Note to Helpful Readers: If we have confusing typos and especially ugly formatting errors, such as an unclosed underline or bold tag, we'd love to hear from you about them -- but please e-mail the author about this, rather than leaving a comment. We often won't read the comments for a while after the post, and if there's a glaring formatting error, we'd see it quickly when we revisit the post, even without the comment; and in any event the comment likely isn't going to be that helpful to your fellow comment readers. So please e-mail us directly about glitches like this. Thanks!]
Comment Policy: We'd like the posts to be civil, of course (no profanity, personal insults, and the like), but we're also hoping that people try to be as calm, reasoned, and substantive as possible. So please, also avoid rants, invective, substantial and repeated exaggeration, and radical departures from the topic of the thread. Sticking with substance -- and staying on-topic -- will make the comments more helpful to other readers, and more pleasant.
As editors, we reserve the right to delete posts, and even to kick out posters, though we hope that both of these will be exceptional events. (We also reserve the right to be busy with other things, and therefore (1) not remove all the posts that might merit removal, and (2) ignore demands such as "You should remove A's posts, because they're just as bad as B's!")
Here's a tip: Reread your post, and think of what people would think if you said this over dinner. If you think people would view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who vastly overdoes it on the hyperbole, rewrite your post before hitting enter.
And if you think this is the other people's fault -- you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, but fools wrongly view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who overdoes it on the hyperbole -- then you should still rewrite your post before hitting enter. After all, if you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, then surely it's especially important that you frame your arguments in a way that is persuasive and as unalienating as possible, even to fools.
Our goal is to provide an interesting and pleasant environment that can help inform readers. To do that, we'll occasionally have to exercise our editorial discretion. Think of this as an in-person discussion group, where having different voices is critical to a great conversation -- but where sometimes the leader has to deal with cranks who sour the conversation more than they enliven it.
Naturally, there's always a risk that this discretion will be used erroneously, no matter how well-intentioned the editor. But discussion groups (especially on the Internet, but also off it) generally need an editor who'll occasionally make such judgments.
And, remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.