Campaign reform? Get real!

• Author: Garvey, Ed

President Clinton scored a major hit, according to reports in the news media, when he attended the recent G-7 conference in Tokyo. He talked to the Japanese people over the heads of their own government, discussing the price of consumer goods in the United States and the desirability of open markets. He could get away with what many would consider interference in Japanese politics - just before scheduled national elections - because the government of Japan had not fallen over the price of lettuce in grocery bins but over the price paid by Japanese corporations to influence members of the ruling party. Corruption, not cabbage, was on the minds of voters.

What Clinton could not do was tell his Japanese audiences about the democratic electoral system in the United States and how they could adapt it to address their problem of political corruption. He would have looked silly if he had focused on the price of winning a House or Senate seat in America. As for the role of corporations in corrupting our system - well, better to talk about open markets.

The average cost of winning a seat in the US. House of Representatives in 1992 was $555,000, and the average cost of a winning Senate campaign exceeded $3.5 million. While those figures are staggering, they don't begin to tell the full story; many seats are not highly competitive because incumbents almost always win. Higher than average sums are spent when races are competitive. Herb Kohl spent more than $7 million in a competitive race in Wisconsin in 1988. California, Texas, and New York Senate races cost well over $15 million.

None of this will be solved by Bill Clinton's "bold" approach to campaign-finance reform. Clinton is betting you won't read the fine print. When the Senate passed a publicity ploy called "reform," Clinton proclaimed that democracy was about to be restored. He talked about "fundamental" change in the flawed system. Could he be serious?

And could Common Cause, the perpetual champion of campaign-finance reform, be serious about protecting the public interest? Forget it. Fred Wertheimer, the head of Common Cause, is leading the applause for the Senate bill. Common Cause deserted the coalition advocating public financing of campaigns and sold out in favor of the Senate version. In so doing, it may have foreclosed the opportunity to have a serious national debate on real reform.

Let's recall how Clinton won the Democratic Presidential nomination and how he got enough money to win the Presidency. William Greider reminds us in his classic Who Will Tell the People that Clinton was the darling of the Democratic Leadership...