Mccain's Farewell
Public financing of presidential campaigns is “dead” John McCain told the Washington Times on Sunday.
The rest of McCain’s campaign finance reform agenda is not looking too healthy either. Any funeral oration however needs to note something. John McCain and the campaign finance reformers reached the wrong answer. But they had the right question.
Congress has always auctioned off special favors and privileges – but never before on such a scale. $800 billion in stimulus! $410 billion in interim spending! Multiple trillions in the 2010 budget! Who knows yet where all the money is going? But one thing we know for certain: it’s being allocated by clout, gift, and quid pro quo.
John McCain was rightly horrified by this kind of behavior over his career in Congress. He proposed limits on campaign donations as the way to halt it, assuming that if there were no more quid there’d be no more quo. That was a big mistake. The quid was not stopped, and the quo has flowed ever more abundantly.
If the answer was wrong, however, that does not mean that the problem has vanished. Especially for conservatives, curtailing congressional favoritism is an urgent priority that demands institutional reform.
Term limits would help. So would a restoration of the strong committee system of the pre-1974 Congresses. (Back then chairmen would traffic in favors – but rank and file members did not, because they had nothing to traffic.) So would more transparency in the way Congress does its business.
McCain’s careers in Congress is ending. His grand cause has not flourished. But his call to “reform” has only become more necessary than ever – and the cost of the status quo more unbearable.
The rest of McCain’s campaign finance reform agenda is not looking too healthy either. Any funeral oration however needs to note something. John McCain and the campaign finance reformers reached the wrong answer. But they had the right question.
Congress has always auctioned off special favors and privileges – but never before on such a scale. $800 billion in stimulus! $410 billion in interim spending! Multiple trillions in the 2010 budget! Who knows yet where all the money is going? But one thing we know for certain: it’s being allocated by clout, gift, and quid pro quo.
John McCain was rightly horrified by this kind of behavior over his career in Congress. He proposed limits on campaign donations as the way to halt it, assuming that if there were no more quid there’d be no more quo. That was a big mistake. The quid was not stopped, and the quo has flowed ever more abundantly.
If the answer was wrong, however, that does not mean that the problem has vanished. Especially for conservatives, curtailing congressional favoritism is an urgent priority that demands institutional reform.
Term limits would help. So would a restoration of the strong committee system of the pre-1974 Congresses. (Back then chairmen would traffic in favors – but rank and file members did not, because they had nothing to traffic.) So would more transparency in the way Congress does its business.
McCain’s careers in Congress is ending. His grand cause has not flourished. But his call to “reform” has only become more necessary than ever – and the cost of the status quo more unbearable.