The Patriot Option

Bruce Ackerman

Campaign reform lives in a time warp, untouched by the regulatory revolution of the last generation. The new regulators disdain heavy-handed "command and control" by bureaucrats. Rather than abolish markets, they try to reshape incentives to encourage socially responsible decision making. Unfortunately, neither the reformers in Congress nor the activists in Maine have tried to incorporate this new thinking into their proposals.

The reform package now in Congress (the McCain-Feingold bill) is a tired repetition of familiar themes. It seeks to limit total campaign expenditures by targeting particular groups for specially restrictive treatment and rewarding cooperating candidates with free television time and reduced postage rates. This now-traditional combination of expenditure limitation, subsidies, and regulatory scapegoating generates a series of familiar dangers. Maine's Clean Money Option, too, suffers from well-known troubles.

The Perils of Traditional Reform. By restricting the amount of money sloshing through the system, we create two big problems. Most obviously, we reduce the amount of political debate. While money isn't speech, it makes effective speech possible, especially in an age of mass media. Less money, less speech--this immediately generates anxious doubts. Do we really want equality at the cost of shutting down debate?

Restricting the flow of cash may also perversely affect the balance of power between incumbents and challengers. Incumbents go into campaigns with public reputations generated through years of high-visibility service. Challengers need lots of cash to offset this advantage. By placing an overall limit on funds, aren't we allowing old-timers to tighten their grip on office under the banner of "reform"?

McCain-Feingold also targets particular groups for particularly intensive regulation. PAC money is restricted in new ways that enhance bureaucratic intervention into the nuts and bolts of the political process. The result will be a system that increases bureaucratic control and decreases the overall resources available for dynamic public debate.

Clean Money advocates are on solid ground, then, in criticizing the kinds of partial reforms represented by McCain-Feingold. But they too have failed to transcend "command and control" models. By giving each qualifying candidate an equal amount of public money, they will force reformers to make an unacceptable choice. Either we will starve serious candidates like Bob Dole to limit the funding of fringe candidates like Alan Keyes; or we can fully fund Dole and provide the Keyes of this world with massive doses of ego-gratification. Neither of these alternatives will prove palatable to the larger public.

Worse yet, the Clean Money advocates have built a large dose of incumbent protection into their program, by insisting on short campaigns and reducing the overall level of funds. It would be tragic if a generation of activists wasted their energies on such a poorly elaborated scheme.

Reforming Reform. We have only primitive regulatory thinking to blame for this impasse. We can achieve genuine campaign reform at an acceptable price by relying on more innovative regulatory methods. The most promising system adapts the voucher technique that is already familiar in discussions of education and welfare reform.

When Americans register to vote, they should be issued a credit card by a special public company--call it the Patriot card and color it red, white, and blue. This card will become the basis of campaign finance.

Suppose, for example, that each voter's card were automatically credited with a $25 balance for the 2000 Presidential election. To gain access to this "red-white-and-blue" money, candidates and other political organizations would be obliged to demonstrate significant popular support by gathering an appropriate number of voter signatures. Upon receipt of these signatures, the Patriot Company would open an account that grants the candidate an initial balance of red-white-and-blue money--say, one million dollars for Presidential aspirants. Candidates could then spend their initial stake on advertisements aiming to convince Patriot holders to transfer more red-white-and-blue money to them. Some candidates will, of course, soon see their initial Patriot balance shrink to zero; others will generate tens of millions as the campaign proceeds.

Under the Patriot program, only red-white-and-blue money could be legally used to finance political campaigns. The use of greenbacks would be treated as a form of corruption similar to the use of greenbacks to buy votes.

The resulting system reduces the influence of private wealth without transferring power from the general citizenry to an imperial bureaucracy. It also obviates the need to target PACs or other regulatory scapegoats. If the American Medical Association can convince doctors (or their patients) to transfer their ten red-white-and-blue dollars to Doctors for Good Government, rather than Citizens for Clinton or the Republican Party, Patriot does not prevent PACs from continuing to play the game of electoral politics, albeit on a reduced scale.

Finally, the reform should be designed to guarantee against any decline in overall resources flowing into the political marketplace. Congress should stipulate that each card-holder must receive an individual balance that, when summed together with everyone else's balance, greatly exceeds the total amount spent in the last green-money election. For example, if $25 in red-white-and-blue money were distributed to each of America's 130 million registered voters, the 3.25 billion dollars deposited in Patriot accounts would be three times the amount spent in the last Presidential election. Even if lots of people never used their Patriot cards, more money would still be running through the system.

In exchange, the voucher plan transforms campaign finance from an inegalitarian embarrassment into a new occasion for civic responsibility. Each Patriotic decision will serve as a preliminary vote--encouraging card-holders to focus on the campaign as it develops, and support the candidates of their choice at the time of their choice. At the same time, it makes it virtually impossible for federal officials to disrupt the flow of funds going into particular campaigns.

Patriot is no panacea. But this is not the place to elaborate all the legal and technical questions raised in its operation. It is more important to urge reformers to rethink their regulatory philosophy before spending years of work on an obsolete agenda.

---