Two weeks ago in my journalism class, we watched the movie All the President’s Men, which recounts
the investigation by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into the Watergate
scandal. After viewing the shady transactions and hidden bank accounts used to
cover up Nixon’s tracks in the early 1970’s, we discussed as a class how
differently the events would be able to play out today.
Someone rightfully pointed out that following Watergate, the
Federal Election Commission (FEC) was formed and that there were rules in place
to prevent incidents like Watergate from reoccurring. But how do those rules
actually work? The enforcement ability of the FEC is essentially zero, and
through decisions like Citizens United and
SpeechNow v FEC, corporations havefound loopholes for spending through Super PACs and 501 c(4)s. If someone
wanted to carry out Watergate today, could they get away with it?
I think the answer is no, at least to a certain extent. The
specific circumstances of Watergate could probably not occur in today’s world,
including funds shuffled between Mexican bank accounts and the Committee to
Reelect the President, but there could still be gross campaign finance
violations that go unnoticed. Romney himself could donate $1 billion dollars to
a 501 c(4), which doesn’t have to disclose its donors, and the 501 c(4) could
give all of that money to Romney’s super PAC. It would be breaking the basic
rule that super PACs should be nonconnected from candidates (and Romney would
be completely funding his own campaign), but there would be little to no way of
figuring out that the rule was broken because of current disclosure laws. Thecurrent FEC is also too deadlocked to enforce any rules, and it’s frustrating
to believe that the agency would be unable to prevent events similar to the one
that spurred its creation.
So what will it take to spark another national conversation
about the necessity of campaign finance reform? Will it take someone finding
out that a candidate is financing his or her own campaign? It will probably be
another huge scandal before people to realize what needs to be done about our
political system. Until then, more money will be flowing into politics,
expenditures wont be limited, and gridlock and polarization will only increase.
I am also interested in the question of what is it going to take to spark a change in campaign finance reform. I would have to agree with Stefani that it seems like it will take another scandal similar to Watergate for reform to take place. The Citizens United case in 2010 set new standards for campaign finance with loopholes that any candidate can get around with the use of the Super PAC. It will be hard for the Supreme Court to overturn this case looking at the age and opinions of the Supreme Court justices. The only other way to reform campaign finance would be through a constitutional amendment which does not seem plausible with today’s Congress.
ReplyDelete