The Buying of the President 2008
By DiAnne Grieser on April 6, 2008 9:38 AM
Last election, the Center for Public Integrity ran a series called "The Buying of the President." We are now hearing about fortunes and tax returns and watching the candidates tweak their "branding" during the primaries. Unprecedented hundreds of millions, truly obscene amounts of money, are gathered not just for phone banking and the newer internet candidate sites but for ads and tours that resemble those of rock stars. Combined expenditures for 2008 are set to reach at least a billion dollars. Buying of the President is the 2008 version from Center for Public Integrity.
Read the series at the link above -
Listen to the podcast ("The Longest Campaign") here or download the MP3
Part One: Early efforts to limit the influence of big money in presidential politics Part Two: Scandals trigger reforms on a grand scale—and grand ways to evade them Part Three: Watergate ushers in the most sweeping campaign-finance reforms in history Part Four: A tidal wave of “soft money” washes through the biggest loophole in campaign-finance law Part Five: A new breed of fat cats “bundles” billions to candidates as the federal campaign-finance system crumbles
Just this week, stories came out in the media about McCain's wife's hundreds of inherited millions, his situation with respect to his own campaign finance law, the impressive amounts raised by the Obama campaign primarily from small donors over the internet, and the $119 million the Clintons have pulled in since leaving the White House. Center for Public Integrity can be depended on to dig deeper.
They have two categories, Democrats and Republicans.
Here is an excerpt from Part Five of the series:
When President Bush ran for reelection in 2004 he again rejected the federal subsidy for the primaries, which would have been less than $20 million, and raised an astounding $269 million. The leading Democratic candidates aspiring to oppose him in the general election, former Governor Howard Dean of Vermont and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, followed suit, knowing that the nominee would have to keep pace with Bush during the long run-up to the Democratic National Convention, when primary money could still be spent. Dean’s campaign imploded despite the $51 million he raised, and Kerry raised $234 million in winning his party’s nomination. Both he and Bush accepted the federal subsidy for the general election campaign, Kerry losing in November.
Until this astounding money race, the basic public-financing scheme set in place in the post-Watergate reforms had essentially worked. In 1986, a bipartisan commission co-chaired by former Democratic National Chairman Robert S. Strauss and former Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird reported that “public financing of presidential elections has clearly proved its worth in opening up the process, reducing the influence of individuals and groups, and virtually ending corruption in presidential election finance.”
But the failure to increase the levels of allowable contributions to deal with the rising costs of campaigns and an accelerated election process finally persuaded leading candidates to break from the fundraising limits. And bundling made it possible for them to raise such vast amounts that the federal subsidies they turned away seemed like small potatoes. The sky’s-the-limit strategy seems to have become the only way to survive and compete, although raising a large number of small donations on the Internet has boosted the campaigns of Howard Dean in 2004 and both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul in 2008.
Last election, the Center for Public Integrity ran a series called "The Buying of the President." We are now hearing about fortunes and tax returns and watching the candidates tweak their "branding" during the primaries. Unprecedented hundreds of millions, truly obscene amounts of money, are gathered not just for phone banking and the newer internet candidate sites but for ads and tours that resemble those of rock stars. Combined expenditures for 2008 are set to reach at least a billion dollars. Buying of the President is the 2008 version from Center for Public Integrity.
Read the series at the link above -
Listen to the podcast ("The Longest Campaign") here or download the MP3
Part One: Early efforts to limit the influence of big money in presidential politics Part Two: Scandals trigger reforms on a grand scale—and grand ways to evade them Part Three: Watergate ushers in the most sweeping campaign-finance reforms in history Part Four: A tidal wave of “soft money” washes through the biggest loophole in campaign-finance law Part Five: A new breed of fat cats “bundles” billions to candidates as the federal campaign-finance system crumbles
Just this week, stories came out in the media about McCain's wife's hundreds of inherited millions, his situation with respect to his own campaign finance law, the impressive amounts raised by the Obama campaign primarily from small donors over the internet, and the $119 million the Clintons have pulled in since leaving the White House. Center for Public Integrity can be depended on to dig deeper.
They have two categories, Democrats and Republicans.
Here is an excerpt from Part Five of the series:
When President Bush ran for reelection in 2004 he again rejected the federal subsidy for the primaries, which would have been less than $20 million, and raised an astounding $269 million. The leading Democratic candidates aspiring to oppose him in the general election, former Governor Howard Dean of Vermont and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, followed suit, knowing that the nominee would have to keep pace with Bush during the long run-up to the Democratic National Convention, when primary money could still be spent. Dean’s campaign imploded despite the $51 million he raised, and Kerry raised $234 million in winning his party’s nomination. Both he and Bush accepted the federal subsidy for the general election campaign, Kerry losing in November.
Until this astounding money race, the basic public-financing scheme set in place in the post-Watergate reforms had essentially worked. In 1986, a bipartisan commission co-chaired by former Democratic National Chairman Robert S. Strauss and former Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird reported that “public financing of presidential elections has clearly proved its worth in opening up the process, reducing the influence of individuals and groups, and virtually ending corruption in presidential election finance.”
But the failure to increase the levels of allowable contributions to deal with the rising costs of campaigns and an accelerated election process finally persuaded leading candidates to break from the fundraising limits. And bundling made it possible for them to raise such vast amounts that the federal subsidies they turned away seemed like small potatoes. The sky’s-the-limit strategy seems to have become the only way to survive and compete, although raising a large number of small donations on the Internet has boosted the campaigns of Howard Dean in 2004 and both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul in 2008.
If there is any prospect of deliverance from the wretched excess of money in presidential politics, it’s not likely to come before the 2012 election cycle, as the leading candidates in both parties this time around take pages from the hugely successful fundraising techniques and apparatus of George W. Bush in 2000, and his copycats in the Democratic Party in 2004, to raise
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