'The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why'
by Elizabeth Drew Birch Lane Press/Carol, $21.95
It is not difficult to find those who complain that American political discourse has become more partisan, more harsh and less statesmanlike. In "The Corruption of American Politics," Elizabeth Drew joins the chorus, arguing that campaign-finance abuses and the corruption of public political discussion have conspired to poison the American public's view of its government.
Drew argues that over the past 25 years, U.S. politics have degenerated into nasty partisan bickering and unfair debates, curtailed or limited by anti-democratic rules imposed by congressional leaders. She believes that Americans had "fresh confidence" in their government in 1974 following the resignation of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal, all of which has dissipated in the intervening years.
Although she focuses her fire on increasing partisanship, she reserves her most withering critique for campaign-finance abuses and the collapse of the system for regulating campaign contributions.
In 1972, Congress enacted these reforms, strictly limiting the amounts that could be contributed to federal candidates or political parties. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned portions of the new law, allowing restrictions on contributions to candidates, but holding it unconstitutional to limit citizens' contributions to political parties for purposes other than direct candidate support. Individuals and political parties, in turn, were limited in their spending on individual candidates, but retained free-speech rights to unlimited spending on issues.
This loophole quickly swallowed the rule, and in present-day political life both major political parties take in vast sums of unregulated "soft money" to be used on "issue ads" calculated to help or hinder specific candidates without expressly saying so. While federal law still strictly regulates direct contributions to candidates and direct expenditures on their behalf, these restrictions, Drew argues, are toothless and easily evaded. And she is probably right.
Drew, who regularly contributes to The New Yorker, usually dispenses carefully reasoned analysis of the political scene in Washington, but here her writing is careless and her analysis either cliched, mushy-headed, or both.
The first portion of her treatise contends that political discourse is not what is used to be and is burdened with more partisan bickering than it was 25 years ago. It's an interesting point and one fairly subject to debate, but Drew so relentlessly lays the blame on the Republican Party that it becomes difficult to take seriously her thesis that "partisanship" is a bad thing. Partisanship, in any event, has been a central theme in American politics, which, after all, has long featured harsh debate, canings on the House floor, dueling pistols (Burr/Hamilton), assassinations (McKinley, Lincoln, Kennedy) and even revolution (tax, sexual and otherwise). Harsh words seem unlikely to pose any serious threat to the Republic's foundation.
Drew's complaints about campaign-finance abuses are equally misplaced. She is right in complaining that loopholes in federal campaign laws are routinely exploited by the major parties. But the cure for this is difficult to imagine and likely worse than the disease.
Drew herself devotes only a few short pages to endorsing campaign-finance reform, but without any serious effort to consider the constitutional implications. One is left wondering whether or how one might limit debate over "issues" by individuals or political parties without posing serious threats to speech rights thought fundamental not only by the Supreme Court, but a majority of Americans. It's a difficult issue, but you're won't find any help in resolving it here.
Federal financing of campaigns, free airtime for political campaigns, or other solutions that might actually relieve candidates of the relentless demands of fund raising for ever-increasing campaign costs are barely mentioned and quickly rejected.
Drew's book draws a compelling portrait of problems facing our democracy at the turn of the century. It is, unfortunately, empty of any real solutions.
