THE ROAD TO HELL

THE ROAD TO HELL ... Where Reform Got Us in the Past
A Historian Suggests Reformers May Be Naive

Reformers are on the march. Headlines blare: "Parties Studying Ways to Improve Presidential Nominating Process." If the New York Times is to be believed, once again America's reformers have targeted the presidential election campaign. They have decided that the campaign takes too long, costs too much, and is far too superficial.

As Ronald Reagan would say, "there they go again." Americans should beware crusaders bearing good intentions and unrealistic schemes. The quest to fix the presidential campaign over the last two centuries is a sad tale of well-intentioned tinkerers creating all kinds of unintended consequences at worst; at best, they simply wake up with more or less the same campaign.

Ironically, three of the most controversial aspects of the current system have not only been fixed over the years, they are themselves products of reforms. The Populists and Progressives first advocated primaries in the 1880s and 1890s as a way of circumventing boss rule. Primaries spread in the 1960s when grass-roots activists also felt squelched. What better way to ensure democracy, they reasoned, than to have the people choose their nominees directly? Yet today, Americans complain that the primary system is lengthy and chaotic. As one recent letter to the editor observed, "I know of no other democracy in which political parties rely on referendums to select both the party's titular head and its political philosophy." Progressive, populists, and sixties liberals would have cheered not mourned.

The 1960s also gave us the presidential debates that we often criticize today as mere beauty contests. The verbal duel between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 triggered a wave of expectations that the debates would redeem what Adlai Stevenson called "the democratic dialogue." Candidates would speak to millions with "sanity, and on the basis of factual presentation," one senator predicted. These hopes were quickly dashed, amid all the talk about John Kennedy's well-tanned good looks and Richard Nixon's sallow complexion and five o'clock shadow. After his defeat Richard Nixon would complain that "what is in a man's head" should be more important "than the type of beard he may have on his face."

Alas, it was not to be.

It was sixteen years before another presidential debate in the general election. Now, debates are an accepted part of the campaign. Typically, between 1960 and 1976, reformers yearned for debates to "reaffirm our democratic institutions and revitalize voter interest"; since 1976 debates have been dismissed as glib, trivial, personality-obsessed snooze-fests.

Primaries and debates, whatever their flaws, have democratized the campaign. These two reforms brought the campaign closer to the people and allowed the masses to watch and judge as candidates grappled with key issues. Campaign finance reform, on the other hand, has been an almost unmitigated disaster. A century's worth of tinkering and rhetoric culminated in the sweeping 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. A six-member, full-time bipartisan Federal Election Commission reflected the Progressive faith in experts. Public financing in general presidential elections for candidates who spurned private contributions reflected the New Deal and Great Society faith in big government. Limiting individual contributions to one thousand dollars, limiting the amounts wealthy candidates could contribute to their own campaigns, and limiting spending in campaigns for federal offices, reflected the 1960s faith in equality.

The 1974 reforms replaced the age of the Fat Cat with the age of the PAC. Boxed in by the new legislation, corporations formed political action committees, just as unions had formed PACs in response to reforms in the 1940s. In 1975 the Federal Election Commission allowed corporate PACs to solicit employees as well as stockholders. This oft-overlooked Sun Oil PAC decision enhanced the PACs' power. PAC spending on congressional races zoomed from $8.5 million in 1972 to $105.6 million in 1990. The finance reform further splintered American politics. Power shifted from the parties toward individual candidates who forged lucrative relationships with particular PACs.

The whole dance between soft money and hard money - which so demeaned the Clinton campaign effort in 1996 - also originated with the 1974 caps on contributions. Money that could not go directly to candidates went indirectly to parties or supportive PACs. Contributions - like rats in the subway system - simply burrowed further underground.

Yes, there are abuses. And yes, reforms are desperately needed. But pie-in-the-sky schemes that reflect naive assumptions rather than hard realities are doomed to fail.

All these schemes -- primaries, debates, campaign finance laws -- are mere tools. All the discussion about mechanics obscures the bigger and deeper issues. Despite constant boasting about living in the world's greatest democracy, Americans have long been ambivalent about the way democracy actually works. Heirs both to a republican tradition that idealized silent candidates whose passivity epitomized their virtue, as well as a liberal democratic tradition that idealized active campaigners who tackled hard issues, Americans have rarely been happy with their candidates -- or the campaign. It is easy to idealize the golden age of campaigning -- which is always twenty years out of reach. It is easy to mourn legendary leaders whose successes -- and deaths -- helped transform them from ordinary politicians into immortal statesmen. But it is far harder to take a look at the chaotic, excessive, populist, personality-obsessed, money-drenched, superficial, grandiose, high-falutin', rip-roaring and mudslinging campaign and realize that Americans get the campaign they deserve. The campaign mirrors our political culture and our popular culture, for better and for worse. In the wild, wacky, yet ultimately wonderful quadrennial journey candidates and their fellow citizens embark on to select a president, there is no more fitting -- or sobering -- tribute to the messy vitality of our democracy.