What is Wrong with Presidential Campaign Financing

What is Wrong with Presidential Campaign Financing

Jay Mandle - Jay Mandle is the W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics at Colgate University. His latest book, Democracy, America, and the Age of Globalization, published by Cambridge University Press (December 2007) explores the rapid growth of income inequality, the dominant role of corporate wealth in elections, and the need for the public financing of campaigns.

Three very disturbing patterns emerge from an analysis of the 2008 presidential campaign. The first is that none of the leading candidates for their party's nominations will be publicly funded. Second is that both Republican and Democratic candidates depend on large private contributions, not small donors. And third, the financial sector of the United States business community provides a disproportionate share of campaign funding...

The second problem concerns the size of the donations received by the leading candidates. In the aftermath of the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and the use of the internet by the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 there was the hope that small donations would increase in importance and reduce if not supplant the dominating role of big contributions. The anticipation was that with BCRA shutting down soft money loopholes, candidates would work harder to raise funds from small donors and the internet would provide them with the means successfully to do so.

That hope has not been fulfilled. So far during the 2007-08 political cycle, fewer than 350,000 people, or 0.16 percent of the adult population, have provided political contributions large enough to be itemized ($200 or more)...

Obviously in the near future the loopholes that allowed all of this to occur will be the subject of intense public debate and proposed remedial legislation. But by making contributions to all of the leading candidates, it is quite clear that the financial community is preparing for this moment of truth. It seeks to ensure that they will have access and the ability to influence who ever enters the White House in January 2009...

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