The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why.

• Author: Nagle, John Copeland
• Position: Review

The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why. By Elizabeth Drew. Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Island Press, 1999. Pp. 278. $21.95.

October 14, 1999, offered the unprecedented spectacle of the Republican members of the United States Senate debating whether or not they were corrupt. The leading advocate for the "yes" proposition was Arizona Senator John McCain--presidential candidate, decorated Vietnam War veteran, member of the infamous Keating Five, and a leading proponent of campaign finance reform. Senator McCain insisted that the existing system for financing political campaigns corrupted the entire Senate.(1) Senator Mitch McConnell--the leading foe of standard campaign finance reform efforts--protested that you cannot have corruption unless somebody is corrupt, and he demanded that McCain name names.(2) McCain refused because he saw the system as the problem, not the individuals within it.(3)

Two subtexts weaved through the October 14 debate. The first involved McCain's website, which suggested that Congress had been corrupted by the relationship between pork barrel spending and campaign contributions. That allegation angered his colleagues who had supported the named spending projects, thus prompting one of the Senate's first debates about the meaning of the materials posted on a website.(4) The second subtext centered on a book. Senator McCain quoted Elizabeth Drew's assertion in The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why that "[t]he culture of money dominates Washington as never before."(5) McCain added, "Elizabeth Drew has it right.... The fact is, there is a pernicious effect of money on the legislative process."(6) McCain's colleagues, however, were not willing simply to accept Drew's judgment. Senator Bennett insisted that Drew's opinions were unrelated to Senator McCain's allegation that the Senate had become corrupt.(7) The Senate debate continued over the course of the next week,(8) but the result was that the Senate once again rejected the kinds of changes to the campaign finance system that Drew, McCain, and others find essential.

Drew has written often and well about the American political system and its follies. Her 1983 book Politics and Money: The New Road to Corruption(9) was widely cited by proponents of campaign finance reform, and she addressed these and many related issues in her other books and her years of political writing for various periodicals.(10) In The Corruption of American Politics, she argues that American politics have been corrupted by a number of factors--especially money, but not just money. She presents a variety of anecdotes told by members of Congress, their staffs, lobbyists, reformers, corporate executives, and media personalities, all of which portray a democratic process gone bad.(11) She spends much less time describing solutions to those problems, but she does identify several actions that could eliminate the corruption and restore virtue to Washington.(12) Traditional campaign finance reform measures feature prominently in Drew's list of solutions, but she also emphasizes that the people themselves can achieve many worthwhile results simply by pressuring their elected representatives.(13)

Many politicians, judges, and other observers have reached the same conclusion as Drew. Senator Joseph Lieberman asserted that Drew's evaluation of the role of money in politics "once was nursed by a few public interest groups and then a group of congressional reformers. Now, it constitutes conventional wisdom."(14) At the oral argument in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, which occurred days before the October 14 Senate debate, Justice Souter stated, "I think most people assume--I do, certainly--that someone making an extraordinarily large contribution is going to get some kind of an extraordinary return for it."(15) His ensuing opinion for the Court reflects that belief.(16) But the October 14 debate shows how strongly many legislators resist the charge of corruption, while reformers have been frustrated in their efforts to legislate new campaign finance proposals addressing their vision of corruption. The colloquy that occurred in the Senate on October 14 was unique among the many recent congressional campaign finance debates because it crystallized what divides the Senate: the contested issue of what constitutes corruption.

This Review evaluates Drew's contention that American politics have been corrupted. In Part I of this Review, I examine what Drew says went wrong and why. Drew's account emphasizes the role of campaign money in politics, but she also identifies concerns about incivility and partisanship. These concerns are, however, compromised by her own incivility and partisanship. Part II of this Review evaluates the dispute about the nature of corruption. The disagreement among Drew, the Senate, and the Court suggests that the problem might lie in the standard reliance on the word "corruption." In Part III, I explore another metaphor for the influence of campaign spending on our political system. Nearly twenty years ago, D.C. Circuit Judge J. Skelly Wright suggested that money pollutes the system.(17) He did not develop that image, yet it continues to resurface in the debate over campaign finance reform. Part III considers whether the problems associated with campaign finance are an instance of pollution, and what the implications of that metaphor are for efforts to remedy what Drew says has gone wrong with American politics. The pollution metaphor is more helpful than the contested image of corruption in several respects. Pollution targets the harmful influence of money as an outside agent; it better captures the systemic concerns voiced by Drew and McCain alike; and it avoids the connotation of individual blameworthiness to which McConnell and other senators objected. It thus offers a better vehicle for examining the difficult empirical questions regarding the cause and effect of campaign money. Moreover, the way in which pollution can be cleaned up says much about the wisdom of current campaign finance reform proposals.

The pollution metaphor adds these insights to the typical understanding of the campaign finance problem. But while pollution usually connotes contaminated water, dirty air, or other environmental hazards, it possesses additional meanings that are closer to what Drew, Senator McCain, Judge Wright, and others see in the political system. Cultural pollution caused by violent, pornographic, and hateful entertainment media and many other sources has sparked a parallel debate concerning the propriety of government regulation of such pollution. Most of the efforts to regulate Internet decency, hate speech, and the like have failed to survive judicial review employing the strict scrutiny imposed by the First Amendment. From that perspective, the hardest question raised by the pollution metaphor--the constitutionality of governmental efforts to regulate pollution caused by expressive activities--suggests that the standard efforts to reform the campaign finance system are problematic whether they are viewed as eliminating pollution, corruption, or both.

1. WHAT WENT WRONG AND WHY

   Drew characterizes the failure of the campaign finance system established in the aftermath of Watergate as the most serious of the problems with our democracy today. But that is not her only concern. The second chapter of the book--entitled "What's Happened to Washington?"--offers the most systematic account of the problems that Drew sees. They include the increased selfishness and decreased disinterestedness of politicians, a decline in the quality of politicians, the increased partisanship of politicians, and a decline in civility in the political process. Drew spends little time addressing the causes of those ills, yet she seems to assume that the broken campaign finance system is to blame for them, too.

   Drew skillfully combines several chapters recounting recent episodes in the struggle for campaign finance reform and American politics more generally with other chapters containing her normative arguments about the problems ailing American politics. The historical chapters detail the campaign finance hearings headed by Senator Fred Thompson, the 1998 Senate debate on campaign finance legislation, and the saga of President Clinton's impeachment.(18) The normative analysis examines those stories and countless interviews with Washington figures in an effort to explain how money and other ills have corrupted the political system and what can be done about it.(19) The overall picture, consistent with the book's subtitle, details "what went wrong" with the American political system, offers a number of explanations for "why" that happened, and generally leaves the appropriate responses for another day.

   1. What Went Wrong

      1. Corrupted Politics

         Money has corrupted Congress. That is the simple lesson from the extended stories that Drew tells about the Senate hearings on campaign finance abuses, the Senate debate on campaign finance reform, and the interviews with members of Congress and private interests reported in the book's chapter on "The Money Culture."(20) Drew asserts that money has influenced the government--especially Congress, but also the presidency--in numerous harmful ways:

         Money influences the legislative decisions of members of Congress. Money influences the outcome of election campaigns. The need to gather enough money to run an effective campaign distracts members of Congress from their legislative duties. Money directs the career choices of Washington politicians.(21) In short, "[s]triving for and obtaining money has become the predominant activity--and not just in electoral politics--and its effects are pernicious."(22) Drew relies upon numerous anecdotes and personal interviews to support her characterization of the growing and insidious role of money in American politics. She quotes an unnamed former House member who...