Thursday, October 30, 2008

So, just how are anonymous donations going to corrupt politics?

Much is being made of the news, reported by the Washington Post and Fox, among others, that the Obama campaign is taking in a large haul of cash from small donors who are using anonymous pre-paid credit cards to support their chosen candidate's efforts to take up residence in the White House. The campaign took in $100 million in September alone. The Obama camp is fueling the chatter with its nudge-and-wink attitude toward the whole affair:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

There's no doubt that the pre-paid cards and lack of security enable contributions beyong legal limits and by people forbidden by law to support campaigns, but much of the reportage simply assumes that's cause enough to be concerned. Kudos to Fox News, then, for asking Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission Associate General Counsel, if it really matters if a candidate takes in untraceable donations, especially since such anonymity inherently ensures that the candidate won't feel any sense of obligation to the unknown donors.

Gross's response, is that "the harm is that illegal money is coming into the campaign coffers. It's not permitted." That's circular reasoning that doesn't explain why the donations should be illegal to begin with.

American political "reformers" have been obsessed for years with the idea that the expenditure of money to support candidates or promote causes is a harmful -- even, they seem to suggest, sinful -- activity that taints a fragile process and leads politicians to wander from the path of righteousness. It's a crusading mindset that has led to the imposition of complex and intrusive rules that make it legally perilous for grassroots groups to pool funds to buy lawn signs or newspaper ads.

Bradley A. Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, warned in a July 2007 article for City Journal, "Campaign finance reform is creating an intrusive regulatory regime that’s steadily eroding Americans’ political freedoms. Making matters worse, it does little or nothing to combat corruption."

The fundamental assumption about the supposedly corrupting influence of money has always been that moneyed interests will buy influence. How can hundreds of thousands of anonymous donors with presumably diverse opinions bribe a candidate to do anything?

That's not to say that Barack Obama is completely blameless. If nothing else, the senator from Illinois has long been a proponent of arcane restrictions on campaign finance, so his sudden discovery of the advantages of extra-legal donations is a bit ... convenient.

But, at the end of the day, it's hard to see any actual harm being done when political activists bypass restrictive laws to donate to the candidates of their choice.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Robb Allen said...

Just off the top of my head, no real thought behind it, but how about the idea that you are allowed to donate as much as you want, only it has to be anonymous?

That would avoid the mindset you're buying favor as well as removing the restrictions on campaign financing we see today.

Just a random though, feel free to shoot holes in it.

October 31, 2008 4:27 AM  
Anonymous Gordon Davis Jr. said...

Corruption stems largely from the influence of organizations, not individuals. I would ban all organizations including bundles from groups of individuals from making any political contributions. Individual contributions should not be restricted. All contributors and amounts should be identified and publicly disclosed on a very timely (immediate) basis. Sunlight is the great disinfectant.

November 5, 2008 3:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

^^ nice blog!! ^@^

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March 19, 2009 2:07 AM  

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