Campaign Spending

Apparently David Brooks wrote a column today arguing that unlimited campaign spending isn't really that big a deal because, hey, there's no conclusive evidence that campaign spending matters. And after all, in most competitive campaigns the marginal value of each extra dollar is zero. So what's the big deal? But I think there's a pretty grave problem with his logic.

The way I see it, there are precisely two options: either campaign spending makes a non-negligible effect on elections, or it doesn't. If it does have an effect, then what we have is a situation where those who either are rich or have pro-rich policies are advantaged because of this fact. Certainly it would be reasonable to expect a sort of quid-pro-quo dynamic to occur in this situation, where a legislator is loath to vote against the interests that paid for their election for fear of losing a valuable cash source. My hunch is that the fact that both Brooks and Prof. Bradley Smith, former chair of the FEC and opponent of campaign finance laws (who spoke at Brown last month in a debate with Lawrence Lessig on the subject) resort to the "it doesn't actually make a different" argument means they would tacitly concede that if it did make a difference, it would be troubling.

If it doesn't make a difference, then something weird is going on. After all, we have for-profit corporations spending considerable amounts of money on electioneering right now. If that spending has no effect, either by influencing elections or influencing legislative votes, then they are in effect throwing away corporate money. And I'm pretty sure that not only is that not a good business decision, it's not even legal; a shareholder could sue for improper use of the company's money.

As a matter of policy (and yes, I know that there are constitutional issues that don't align perfectly with the policy considerations), if privately-financed electioneering makes a difference in elections, I think it makes perfect sense to switch to public election funding. As I said, I'm not at all certain that very many opponents of campaign finance laws would want to dispute that, at least in public. But stipulate for the moment that electioneering makes no difference. In that case, a large number of people are irrationally wasting their money, and we would be doing them a favor to prohibit them from doing so. If, on the other hand, that spending is not wasted, and one's true agenda is to promote the power of the wealthy, then it makes a good deal of sense to want corporations and the rich to be allowed to make infinite, unlimited donations or independent expenditures.

As I said, I get that there are free-speech issues at hand, although I think to some extent those issues are smoke-and-mirrors. But I'm just pointing out that it doesn't make sense to assume that all of this spending has no effect, because if it has no effect, then it's bloody stupid of the people who are doing the spending.

UPDATE: Oh, and I just noticed how the article ends:

Which is unfortunate. After all, there are many, many good reasons to vote against Paul. What he did during his time at Baylor, however, isn’t one of them. 

See, that's just wrong. That he is, in all likelihood, not really all that Christian is not a good reason to vote against him. That he lies about it might be, especially since he had a history of trying to gin up sympathy explicitly for religious purposes (criticizing Conway's use of the word "hell"). And that he kidnapped a woman in college, actually kidnapped her, bound her, blindfolded her, and forced her to smoke marijuana? I think that's a perfectly good reason not to vote against him, until and unless he comes up with a compelling explanation. (Actually I think the only good reason to vote against someone is their ideology, but people don't follow that rule, so given reality I stand by that statement.)