When David Letterman hosted Barack Obama last week, he broke out of his comedy mode for a moment of serious commentary. After heralding Obama's announcement that he'd raked in some $25 million in the crucial first-quarter fundraising period, Letterman gently prodded. "Why is this so essential for such high-profile candidates to have this kind of early money?"
Obama gave a dodgy reply coated in humor: "We've got to advertise on the Letterman show. Most of the money goes into television." But he added a pitch for real campaign finance reform, saying, "I think it would be preferable if we had some form of public financing or free television time, but I think your bosses at CBS wouldn't go for that." A chastened Letterman whispered agreement, then abruptly changed the subject to the brouhaha over David Geffen's spat with the Clintons.
Indeed, the tens of millions already raised by would-be presidential nominees indicate that the 2008 election cycle will no doubt be a highly profitable one for Letterman's bosses and other TV executives. Candidates who don't raise enough money to get their message on TV -- and consistently repeat it -- aren't considered viable. And it takes increasingly more money to buy the air time to disseminate that message; hence, the increasingly high stakes for this early primary fundraising period. To get an idea of how fast this fundraising threshold has risen, consider that the prior record for this period was held by Al Gore, who raised "only" 8.9 million in 1999's first quarter.
For roughly 48 hours, it looked like Hillary Clinton had won the early-fundraising sweepstakes with $26 million, around $19 million of which can be spent on the primary race. Technically, she still holds the top spot, but Obama took the fun -- and the meaning -- out of her win. He held back and dropped his $25.7 million total like a bomb at the end of the news cycle, giving him a tactical victory in this critical fundraising period ending March 31.
The Clinton camp is on the defensive. Obama's figure is made all the more powerful by both his lower expectations and by the fact that he raised his money "mostly from small donors," as he likes to brag. Obama told Letterman, "90 percent of the folks who donated on the website barackobama.com gave $100 or less." This will enable Obama to spend $24.8 million of his money in the primary. As anyone who donated to his campaign will know, that's because his team was ruthless in its push to amass as many individual donors as possible at -- but not above -- the $2,300 per-person limit for primary contributions. Those who gave less are good targets for appeals to give again.
As the story continues to unfold, we're seeing that some candidates have already spent significant portions of their first-quarter money. But Clinton, who was fortunate to start with a bigger cache than Obama, ends the period with the most primary funds on hand.
There are several ways to slice and dice this information, but the result is generally the same: The candidate with a terrific message but little money to buy TV spots is like the tree in the woods. Nobody hears him (or her) fall. And Democratic trailer John Edwards, with his paltry $14 million, is likely turning to petrified wood.
Compared to the Democratic contenders, the GOP hopefuls aren't exactly having a record-breaking year. Raising $20.7 million secured a surprise lead for Mitt Romney (who, no doubt, he wishes he could show that kind of strength in public opinion polls). He tried to boost that number to by $2.35 million with a personal loan, which isn't included in his total. Even without the self-donation, Romney easily holds the lead over second-ranked Rudy Giuliani, who reported just $14.7 million. And an embarrassing $13 million fundraising total forced John McCain to delay his official declaration of candidacy in favor of a campaign overhaul.
It's ironic that McCain, a champion of campaign finance reform, is the Republican most at risk of falling after this first-quarter fundraising report. David King, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, quipped to CNN, "For McCain, it looks like he's made campaign finance reform work. Everyone knew he didn't like the role of money in politics, but one would have hoped he would have liked the role of money in his own campaign. He's now coming to this race a day late and $12 million short."
When the McCain-sponsored Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was enacted in 2002, his biggest victory was the legislation's soft-money ban. But the continued prominence of PACs and groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has proven campaign finance to be the uncontrollable hydra of American politics. Cut off one head and it grows two more. For all his efforts, McCain has made little headway in improving the increasingly obscene presidential fundraising juggernaut.
That's because he's been fighting the symptom and not the cause.
Perhaps he would have fared better if he had sided with Common Cause and other progressive groups that have been clamoring for change not in how candidates raise money to pay for TV, but in how TV charges candidates for the all-important air time.
Virtually all other democratic nations have a system of free air time for candidates. And Common Cause makes clear that the price we pay for not having such a system is a (relatively) smooth road for incumbents. The organization reports:
In the 435 races for U.S. Congress in 2000, the typical winner outspent the typical loser by nearly three to one during the campaign, and on election day, piled up a victory margin of 70 percent to 30 percent -- a landslide. A staggering 98.5 percent of all incumbents seeking reelection were successful.
Actually, McCain did try to make progress on this front in 2003, when he co-authored (with Russ Feingold) the Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Act, which sought to make more air time available for debates and other programming that gives balanced exposure to candidates. It also called for providing the political parties with up to $750 million in vouchers to hand out to their federal candidates, entitling candidates to acquire media time free of charge.
The bill didn't get very far, but the Campaign Legal Center maintains an ongoing grassroots campaign to keep the concept alive. The Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Coalition is stacked with every progressive activist organization you might name, from MoveOn to the Sierra Club. But incumbents make the laws, and this one isn't in their best interest, regardless of the side of the aisle on which they're sitting. The coalition's informational video is voiced by Walter Cronkite who, of all people, must know that's the way it is.
Conservatives like to decry free air time proposals as a violation of the First Amendment. The National Association of Broadcasters takes that tack as well, and sent attorney Cameron DeVore to make the case at the initial meeting of then-Vice President Al Gore's commission on this topic.
DeVore insisted that government required free air time would "run squarely into a First Amendment wall [and] it is impossible to escape the conclusion that a free air time mandate would be... struck down by the courts." He said it would be "an insuperable burden" on government to prove that such a requirement didn't infringe on First Amendment freedoms.
But free speech concerns are a thin disguise for broadcasters and conservatives' knee-jerk support of commerce at any cost. Clearly, providing free air time doesn't limit speech, it expands it. And, it ensures all candidates speak at the same volume. There's nothing that would stop the fundraising madness faster than dropping the media cost out of campaign budgets, where TV can suck up more than three-quarters of available funds. When you consider that even hotly contested local races can have budgets starting at $3 million, you can see why TV stations are not jumping on the free air time idea.
But for the rest of us, there's nothing to lose but lopsided campaigns operating under a universal theme that transcends all real issues and all party boundaries: "Show me the money."
Marj Halperin is a communications consultant and campaign strategist based in Chicago. She's also co-founder of the Bread and Butter Forum, an organization with the goal of defining a new progressive political agenda generated at the grassroots level.
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