November 24, 1999

To Reform Campaign Finance, Let’s Try Shortening Campaigns

by Craig Ruff, President

Why can’t we run elections like the British? A few weeks of campaigning, and it’s over and done. For a people who find it hard enough to grasp American style of government, an astounding number of Americans know enough about British electoral politics to love its brevity.

To call for campaign finance reform presumes that money is the root of political evil. Bushel baskets of checks smother ethics. Trench-coated guys with beady eyes and Gucci shoes roam Capitol corridors, seeking to capture the souls of public servants. Big Business and Labor call the policy shots the old-fashioned way: they buy them. As special interests are cleaning up, it is argued, somebody else better be cleaning up the way we raise and spend campaign money.

Full disclosure of campaign monies is not enough for the most ardent reformers. For nearly 40 years, the media and voters have been able to find out who is spending on which game and how much. Not good enough, say reformers.

Nearly every recent reform effort has struck at the supply—contributions—side of campaigns, that is, how much money one is permitted to raise and in what increments and from what categories of contributors. But virtually every supply-side reform crumbles because of court interpretations of free speech and free association or loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through.

Only one reform has been suggested to meet the demand—cost—side of campaigns, and that is that broadcasters, cable casters, and newspapers should give free to candidates what other advertisers pay for. Because such a move would violate the media’s right to sell their product (air time or print space) and lead to endless questions about just how much space/time should be given to every candidate for every office, this idea understandably has gone nowhere.

So, to reduce the need for money, how about shortening the campaign season? Compressing campaigns into weeks rather than letting them drag on for months and even years means fewer dollars would be needed. The big-ticket items in any campaign budget are media buys: 15-second TV spots, 30-second radio ads, direct-mail pieces, and ½-inch newspaper blocks. The less time candidates are given to campaign, the fewer of these items they must buy and the less money they must raise to do it.

There is nothing in the federal and state constitutions that dictate four-year campaigns for offices with four-year terms, or six-year campaigns for six-year offices, or two-year campaigns for two-year offices. Why do we have to have a system that forces candidates for president to hold $1,000-a-plate dinners 24 months before Election Day? Why do we have to have a system that rains on the parade of someone who wants to run for governor in 2002 by saying that it already is way too late to start the campaign?

Here is a modest proposal, which can start in Michigan. Just as now, we will elect candidates for state legislature and statewide executive posts on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in November of even-numbered years. But the political parties’ primaries would occur only one month prior to the general election rather than in early August, three months prior.

State candidates would be prohibited from spending any money on mass media before Labor Day. They would be free to spend money on staff, fundraising events, polling, travel, but not on advertising through television, radio, newsprint, and direct mail.

Prior to Labor Day, candidates would be free to make speeches, walk neighborhoods, issue white papers, kiss babies, and inundate the media with news releases. But only after Labor Day could they purchase media time/space. There are only four weeks from early September until the October primary and only so much newsprint space and broadcast and cablecast time to be had and bought. Likewise, between the October primary and the November election, the need for megabucks for media buys declines because of limited supply.

Such a fast-paced election season will deliver more than just campaign finance reform. It will deliver excitement. Who, today, is not worn down and fatigued by would-be nominees’ endless pursuit of public office? Campaigns never end or begin; they are seamless, studied docu-dramas. Their length leads less to voter education than to pursuit of trivia. Fully 11 months before next November’s presidential runoff, Tuesday’s poll shows McCain running a dozen points behind Bush in New Hampshire. On Wednesday, another one pops up and has McCain pulling even. I ask you, who cares? Do we really benefit from monitoring hourly or daily the ups and downs in fortunes of people who won’t even face the first full-fledged vote until February?

Boredom expands to fill space. Our seemingly endless campaigns are boring voters to tears.

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, everybody in America will be boring for 15 minutes. We can tolerate that. It’s when it goes on for 15 months and more that we tune out. We cannot tolerate a comatose voting public that has tuned out all politics.

How about it, campaign finance reformers? Let’s win reform by limiting the need for money. Let’s dramatically shorten campaigns. If we order it now, we’ll get a bonus: Relief from numbness.