| As the Jack Abramoff affair
unfolds in Washington, D.C., I’ve been visiting
with one of my colleagues here at the Center for the
Rocky Mountain West about the broader and longer-term
implications of this and other abuses of the political
system. Bob Brown has agreed to help me with this column,
by engaging in an on-line conversation—which we
invite our readers to join.
I’ve known and deeply respected Bob Brown since
our service together in the Montana Legislature back
in the 1970s and ‘80s. Bob served as President
of the State Senate and as Secretary of State before
becoming the Republican candidate for governor of Montana
in 2004. He brings to our work here at the Center a
great wealth of political experience, as well as a deep
interest in history.
It was history that got us started on this topic, so
I’m going to begin by asking Bob for some reflections
about the history of money, politics and corruption,
especially here in the West.
Bob Brown: Thank you Dan. The decisions
of government determine who is taxed and by how much,
and how the tax money is spent. So, it follows that
those who stand to gain or lose from the decisions of
government will try to influence the decision makers.
Sometimes, that influence becomes corruption, and the
American West has supplied more than a few examples.
This was the case, for example, with decisions
surrounding the construction of the transcontinental
railroads in the development of the West nearly a century
and a half ago.
In 1862 Congress approved the construction of a transcontinental
railroad. The officers of the Union Pacific Railway
created their own construction company (the “Credit
Mobilier”) to build the railroad. They then sold
stock in that construction company to key members of
Congress at bargain prices. As result, congressional
oversight of this huge public project was virtually
nonexistent. Construction costs skyrocketed, generating
enormous profits for Credit Mobilier stockholders.
The resulting scandal severely tarnished the reputations
of some of the nation’s leading politicians. Meanwhile,
though, the West was generating another scandal which
broke when people began asking how U.S. Grant’s
Secretary of War, William Belknap, a man of modest means,
managed such a grand and lavish lifestyle on his salary
of $8,000 a year. As it turned out, Belknap had been
granting franchises to operate military trading posts
in exchange for “kick-backs” from the post
traders. Belknap resigned from office when his impeachment
and conviction appeared certain. The Senate failed to
generate the two-thirds majority necessary to turn Belknap’s
impeachment into a conviction, but by then Belknap was
ruined, and he committed suicide a few years later.
The Senate, which was still elected by the state legislatures,
was by the 1870’s commonly referred to as the
“millionaires club,” and it provided its
own examples of the corrupting power of money. The American
public became increasingly suspicious that wealthy individuals
were using their personal fortunes to bribe state legislators,
and were buying seats for themselves in the U.S. Senate.
The suspicion was confirmed in 1901 when a bidding
war for a U.S. Senate seat between rival Montana “copper
kings” Marcus Daley and W.A. Clark was conducted
virtually in the open. Clark ultimately obtained a majority
of legislators’ votes, and when confronted about
how he did so, is famously said to have replied, “I
never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.”
Clark’s example was one of those most frequently
used in the “progressive era” of reform
in the early 1900s to support passage of the 17th Amendment
to the Constitution providing for the direct election
of U.S. Senators by the voters of the states. No individual,
no matter how wealthy, it was reasoned, could buy the
votes of a majority of voters in an entire state.
Daniel Kemmis: The Western states
were at the vanguard of the progressive reforms, including
direct election of U.S. senators, but also including
new democratic mechanisms like the citizen initiative,
referendum and recall. Those were serious reforms, and
the West can be proud of the role it played in them.
And yet at the same time, the region continued to contribute
more than its share of examples of the kind of corruption
that called forth such reforms. In fact, the next wave
of corruption in the “Roaring Twenties”
was named for a Western landmark.
Teapot Dome dominated a stretch of oil-rich public
land in Wyoming that had been set aside as a naval petroleum
reserve. President Warren G. Harding had appointed New
Mexico Senator Albert Fall as his Secretary of the Interior.
Fall approved no-bid, sweetheart leases for the Teapot
Dome oil in return for very substantial gifts and no-interest
loans to himself. Wyoming Sen. John B. Kendrick introduced
a resolution launching an investigation, and it was
Montana’s junior Sen. Thomas J. Walsh, a leading
proponent of progressive reforms, who eventually got
the goods on Fall.
So the West seems to have generated more than its share
of the most famous examples of corruption, and also
a fair share of the reform energy. The corruption may
be related to the fact that the West, with its vast
resources, could readily generate sizeable pools of
money, especially when a modest portion of that money
was strategically invested in the kind of influence
that could produce public subsidies, contracts, etc.
In those terms, Indian tribes with gambling revenue
are just one more Western bonanza waiting for the clever
manipulation of someone like Jack Abramoff.
And yet there’s this simultaneous Western phenomenon
of a deep reservoir of democratic energy that fuels
periodic reform efforts like the direct election of
U.S. senators.
Bob Brown: And for a few decades following
that reform, the power of money that had been able to
bribe state legislatures, proved insufficient to influencing
an entire state’s electorate. But in the “electronic
age” of television and systems of mass communications,
that changed. Today, the people are clearly influenced
in their electoral choices by advertising. And in the
late 20th century, it became constitutionally possible
for millionaires to “self finance” their
media campaigns for public office. The result is that,
once again, the Senate is being described as the “millionaires
club.”
The money for the political ads often comes from those
who have a monetary interest of their own in the outcome
of the election. The power of money has always seemed
to find a way to seep into our political system.
Daniel Kemmis: And then
in 1976, the role of money was given constitutional
protection when the Supreme Court decided in Buckley
v. Valeo that campaign expenditure limitations constituted
an abridgment of free speech. This holding has become
the stumbling block to any effective or lasting campaign
finance reform. If there is a fundamental and recurring
problem with the role of money in our political system,
the Supreme Court has made that problem all but insurmountable
by essentially writing into the Constitution the old
adage that “money talks.”
Bob Brown: Certainly the First Amendment
is fundamental to our freedom. Our system of government
by the consent of the governed could not exist if our
government could muzzle our political expression. But
the Buckley decision guarantees that individuals
have as much free speech as their money can buy. Wealthy
candidates for public office cannot be limited on how
much of their personal fortunes they spend on their
own campaigns for office or the “527” advocacy
groups they finance to advertise in support of or opposition
to candidates and issues.
Expression is fundamental. But the court’s recognition
of the concept of one person, one vote underscores the
constitutional importance of equality in our political
system. I agree with you, Dan. I think the Supreme Court
should re-examine the Buckley decision. It seems
to me that campaign financing limits should apply equally.
Daniel Kemmis: I suggested in a recent
column on this page that Western senators might play
a role in broadening the range of questions a Supreme
Court nominee is asked. Maybe the old Western democratic
instincts should generate some questions about the “money
talks” doctrine of Buckley. If that constitutional
doctrine has in fact become a fundamental challenge
to maintaining a workable democracy, then it may be
time to begin examining Supreme Court nominees on this
aspect of their First Amendment philosophy. Is Buckley
“settled law” of a kind that cannot be challenged,
regardless of the damage it may do to democracy, or
is it the kind of precedent that deserves to be revisited?
|
