Death to the Public Funding of Political Campaigns!

Howard Dean to Skip Public Financing

In a historic move, Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Saturday he will skip public financing and the spending limits that come with it, hoping his money-raising power can help win the nomination and unseat President Bush.
"We have supported public financing but the unabashed actions of this president to undercut our Democratic process with floods of special interest money have forced us to abandon a broken system," Dean said at a news conference.

The 2004 race is the first time that candidates from both major parties will forgo the Watergate-era public financing system. Bush also is opting out, as he did in the 2000 Republican primaries and raised a record $100-plus million.

Dean made his decision based on a high-tech tally of 600,000 supporters, whom he asked to vote by e-mail, Internet, telephone or regular mail through Friday.

The former Vermont governor said 85 percent of those who weighed in 105,000, according to campaign officials urged him to opt out. He becomes the first candidate in Democratic Party history to take such a step.

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Good for him. John Samples from CATO agrees:

Liberal Democrats don't usually declare a government program dead. Yet Howard Dean may be doing just that, and Americans owe him a vote of thanks.

Dean is asking his supporters to approve, by an e-mail vote, his plan to forgo public financing of his primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. A "yes" vote would make him the first Democrat to run without the help of taxpayers since public campaign financing was established in 1976. And that could sound the death knell for a useless system.

Dean has concluded that accepting public money for the primaries would leave him with few resources after he got the nomination. He has decided he must be free of the restraints that come with taxpayer financing of his primary campaign to go up against President Bush's ample war chest.

[...]

The presidential program has not fulfilled its goals. Consider corruption and citizen distrust of government. Since public financing began, the National Election Study's trust-in-government index has twice (1980 and 1994) been lower than it was in the Watergate year of 1974. More Americans also believed that "quite a few" government officials were crooked after the elections of 1984, 1988 and 1992, according to another NES survey.

The presidential funding program has not increased electoral competition compared with the system of private financing it replaced. We have seen fewer candidates in the party presidential primaries since 1976 than in elections before that time. The two most successful independent candidates for the presidency of the last 50 years - George Wallace in 1968 and H. Ross Perot in 1992 - both ran without public backing. On the other side, taxpayers have had to give millions of dollars to political extremists like Lyndon LaRouche and Lenora Fulani.

Finally, and most important, surveys indicate that Americans simply do not like public financing of campaigns in general and the presidential program in particular. Participation in the tax form check-off has dropped precipitously since 1982. Currently, just a shade over 10% of Americans fill in the box. American taxpayers have spent $2 billion on presidential public funding since 1976. They have received little for their money.

All Rights Reserved © 2003 Cato Institute

Cato link via Hit & Run.

I don't adhere to the mostly utilitarian and empiricist criticism Mr. Samples levels against the program, but he's not incorrect on those points. The program doesn't work.

If I were to level my most serious charges against a system of public campaign funding, they would be violations of property rights and freedom of association.

Property rights are violated when property (in this case, money) is used or taken from an individual without that person's voluntary consent. It's wrong to steal from others. Tax money supporting political campaigns is a violation of property rights just as all government-levied taxes are. Try to avoid them and look out.

That's bad, but it's even worse when that property is used to further the means and promote the ends of someone with whom you don't agree. The taxpayer has been supporting the agendas of the major parties for 30 years. Those agendas have included all manner of ideas and proposals that would have infringed upon individual rights and liberty. Why must my property go towards helping these people? My freedom of association is thus dramatically eroded because I am in effect saying and doing somethings I'd otherwise never consider. I find it abhorrent the resources of individuals are aiding the campaigns of candidates they don't agree with, would not vote for, and oppose.

Having political speech regulated is also bad.

Now, admittedly, how the Public Funding Program is financed is not as I criticized above. It uses a voluntary donation through our federal income tax forms. If we so choose, we can donate $1 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. In this sense, it doesn't violate property rights and doesn't create freedom of association problems nearly as bad as general revenue funding.

On the official Dean website, the press release says in part:

In a ceremony here today, Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean, M.D., announced that, following an overwhelming vote by supporters over the last two days, Dean for America would not accept public matching funds.

"Today by a 85-15 margin the people who made this campaign have voted to decline public financing. We support public financing, but the unabashed actions of this president to thwart our democratic processes with a flood of special interests money have us forced to abandon a broken system," Governor Dean said.

"Our campaign has not been talk of campaign finance reform, it has been actual reform. Over 200,000 people have given an average of $77 to bring us here and they have now overwhelmingly refused to be intimidated by George Bush and his cronies," Dean added.

In 2000, then-Governor Bush opted out of the public financing system, raising and spending more than $100 million in the primaries. This election, he has decided to opt out of the system again and is widely expected to raise $200 million for a primary where he has no opponent.

Today, Dean-joined onstage at the University of Vermont by seven grassroots leaders from across the country-announced the decision and then proceeded to sign a declaration of independence announcing that the campaign would be "free and independent of special interests."

He's making the rational choice. But I almost have to sneer at that last bit. No "special interests" huh? Any candidate who proposes anything that gives one group of people an advantage over another is guilty of pandering to the special interests that drive that choice. Dean's political philosophy is rife with special interests. Just like every other major candidate in this race.

Posted by Drizzten at November 08, 2003 01:27 PM