From The Hill: Vulnerable Democrats defend support for campaign finance legislation
Campaign finance regulations are an incumbent’s best friend. The incumbent already has name recognition, and a deep network of fundraising contacts. Heck, Congress’ franking privilege allows incumbents to send out de facto campaign messages for free. Challengers have none of those advantages.
It takes a lot of money to buy enough ads to get a challenger’s name recognition anywhere near the incumbent’s. Campaign finance regulations make it harder to raise that money, and harder to put up a fight against established officeholders. No wonder so many incumbents from both parties favor strict campaign finance regulations! It’s good for their job security.
Dick Morris, Bill Clinton’s shrewd former adviser, explains that support for the Wall Street bailout killed McCain’s chances of being elected president:
“Had McCain voted against the bailout of Wall Street firms and backed the Republican alternative, there is no question in my mind that he would have won. After calling attention to his “suspension” of his campaign, McCain compliantly and supinely embraced the Bush bailout backed by the Democrats. America was waiting for him to speak out against excessive government spending and against bailing out Wall Street firms for their greed.
Some will blame the war in Iraq for McCain’s defeat. Others will cite the economic crisis. But had McCain had the courage of his convictions, it would have sent a message to all voters that he was determined to change business-as-usual in Washington. By bowing to conventional wisdom, he undid the entire work of his convention and contradicted his message of independence from President Bush. His willingness to vote for the bailout package, earmarks and all, belied his pretensions of independence.”
Republican political analyst Frank Luntz agrees with Dick Morris, as does law professor and commentator Todd Zywicki, who specializes in financial, banking, and bankruptcy issues.
(We earlier explained how the bailout was dangerous and inflationary, could cause economic stagnation and future bubbles, and could result in a vast amount of veiled political extortion, favoritism, and influence-peddling that undermine democracy.)
The damage from supporting the bailout was further compounded by McCain’s foolish support for buying up all the bad mortgage loans in America at face value, a horrible idea that conflicted with his own past record of opposing corporate welfare, and cost him the support of fiscally and economically conservative (but socially liberal) newspapers like the Arlington Sun-Gazette.
Lies multiply in election years. Legal commentator John Rosenberg notes that he “received in the mail today a glossy, large flyer from the ‘Democratic Party of Virginia’ saying, with many incorrect examples, that ‘John McCain opposes equal pay for women.’”
In reality, neither McCain nor Obama has ever suggested that equal pay for women is a bad idea. Instead, they disagree on what the legal deadline should be for bringing pay discrimination claims. Obama just thinks the deadline for suing should be longer than McCain does.
Every employment lawyer knows that equal pay is already mandated by federal law, and that employees can sue over pay discrimination years after it happens. An employee can sue both under the Equal Pay Act, which has a three-year deadline, and under Title VII, which has a 180-day or 300-day deadline (depending on the state). Moreover, these deadlines can be extended when appropriate under a doctrine known as “equitable tolling.”
In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Supreme Court, in a divided 5-to-4 decision, applied the Title VII deadline rigorously, holding that the deadline runs from the date of the first paycheck affected by the discrimination — even if future paychecks are affected by the discrimination, too. (The plaintiff in Ledbetter could have sued instead under the Equal Pay Act, which had a longer deadline. Instead, the plaintiff inexplicably sued only under Title VII — and waited to sue until long, long after she suspected discrimination). Four dissenting justices argued the deadline should run only from the last paycheck or pension benefit affected by the discrimination — even though that could result in an employer being sued decades later, even after the supervisor who originally set the pay has retired or died.
Obama agrees with the four dissenters, who argued that the deadline should run from the last paycheck affected by the discrimination, and has supported legislation, called the “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” to override the Supreme Court’s decision.
By contrast, McCain’s view is closer to that of the Supreme Court’s majority, and he has opposed the bill to overturn the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision, viewing it as opening the floodgates to litigation and stale claims.
Regardless of whether Obama or McCain has the better argument, McCain’s position is certainly consistent with a Supreme Court ruling – and is not a basis for claiming that “McCain opposes equal pay for women,” as the Virginia Democratic Party claims. (Many eminent employment lawyers, like Ross Runkel, predicted the Supreme Court’s decision, and considered it a logical outcome of the Court’s own past precedents. The decision didn’t surprise me, either. As a lawyer, I used to handle discrimination claims, and later worked at the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education.).
I live in Arlington, Virginia, a liberal stronghold. Children are told that “Republicans are ‘bad and evil’” at school. On a daily basis, my home gets called by the Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, seeking to talk to my wife, my 18-month old daughter, and imaginary people like Hassan Bader. We also get calls from a variety of liberal interest groups. (On the bright side, living in a liberal enclave means we don’t have to put up with any robocalls from the McCain campaign, which seems to have written off Northern Virginia).
When my wife, a moderate who doesn’t support any candidate, expresses disinterest in these calls, the callers get cranky, as if she were criticizing their messiah. In truth, their calls are pointless: my wife, a French citizen, can’t even vote in our elections. (Some independent voters called by the Obama campaign report being asked, in a hostile tone, “are you a Republican?”, when they express disinterest).
These callers, who seem to view Obama as the messiah, and any dissent from that view as sacrilege, should read John Stossel’s column today, “We Don’t Need Anyone to Run the World,” which explains why even smart leaders can’t run the economy better than individual citizens and free markets can, and why they shouldn’t be arrogant enough to try to run the world. This is particularly timely, given that we may end up with a virtual political monopoly next year.
Given the legion of awful proposals from Obama and McCain this year (not to mention many out-and-out lies and distortions), treating them like messiahs, and expecting government officials to magically fix our problems, is very naive.
That liberals wish libertarians to go away is, perhaps, not surprising. But the issue is much more serious than even Jonah Goldberg realizes. McCain’s championing of “getting the monied interests out of politics” and Obama’s pledge to eliminate their influence both amount to an attempt to eliminate economic interest groups (and, indeed, interest groups that are in any way allied with economic interests – such as independent free market groups) from politics. But, politics is about interest group influences. If economic interest groups are eliminated, only ideological groups are left – right and left groups driven by cultural, ethnic, environmental or other religious values. Is that world likely to prove more tolerant, more compassionate, more “concerned?” My personal vision of the future is to find myself about to testify in Congress on some creative expansion of the state. As I’m about to testify, the chairman speaks up: “Mr. Smith, before you begin, I have a question I’d like you to answer. Are you now or have you ever been associated with the wealth producing sector of the United States?”
A world where economic interests are disenfranchised – indeed, even de-legitimized – is a world that will have little regard for economic – and, thus, indivdiual – liberty.
Ideologues have created far more horrors than have even the most rampant of business villains. My understanding is that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung were not motivated by profits.
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