Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Steven Farnham, a resident of Plainfield.
In “Campaign Finance Problem Is Not The Money, It’s Finding The Data,” a column recently posted on VTDigger, Jon Margolis seems to argue that, while we might want to “bring the reporting-retrieval system into the 21st century,” there is little evidence to support the need for campaign finance reform in Vermont.
Mr. Margolis exhorts us to “… look at … candidates who won elections because they outspent their opponents.” He concludes that he has found “… none or very, very little of …” (this phenomenon).
I would submit that Mr. Margolis has apparently never supported (or run for office as) a third-party candidate.
But a more important point that seems to elude Mr. Margolis is that the problem with campaign finance reform is that it attempts to regulate what ought to be outright illegal.
In sports, we would never tolerate a mind-numbing advertising campaign over which team should win something like the Super Bowl, and then we all vote to “elect” our favourite team to be the winner. In order to win in sports, we expect the competitors to actually compete. The advertising is only sold to pay for the cost to broadcast the event(s), and is not related in any way to who will win.
Isn’t the process of determining who runs the business of state at least as important as a blithering idiotic game?
If the answer is “yes,” then I submit the following:
The “game” of politics should be open to all comers – not only to those that can afford the divisive, deceitful, sensationalistic, fear-mongering drivel that currently passes for campaign advertising in commercial media. All of that should simply be expunged. It is a distraction, and serves no good purpose. Advertising may not be aimed in favour or against a candidate, but instead, may be sold only to sponsor or underwrite the broadcast of the competition. And there should be a competition.
By allowing media to shift political campaigns to the revenue side of the ledger, rather than treat them as news, we’ve allowed the media to extract massive profit from politics at the expense of an unbiased effort of keeping the public informed.
Said competition should encourage third party participants; third party affiliation should not constitute a virtual guarantee of defeat from the outset. The competition should be one of ideas, not of who can present his qualifications with the most embellishment or sling the most mud about his opponent(s). The competition should grant every candidate, regardless of party, to equal opportunity to interviews and fact checking by the media, and to media-sponsored debates of the issues amongst all candidates.
No media outlet – especially one as ubiquitous as Vermont Public Radio — should be allowed de facto endorsement of mainstream candidates by cleansing the debate of any interaction between mainstream candidates and third party contenders. That this occurs in commercial media is reprehensible enough, but for an organization receiving public support whilst claiming “unbiased” news coverage to exhibit chronic behaviour of this sort is especially cynical, and should be immediately and expressly banned.
The media moguls would most likely argue that political news and debate would not attract enough listeners and viewers – thereby rendering the prospect of selling non-political advertising to pay for broadcast of election-related news bleak at best – which, could be true. In this case, we could always fall back on the argument that since candidates running for office actually is news, the media should be required to report on it. And since the public airwaves are a part of the commons, broadcasters should be required to provide such coverage as a public service and as a condition of incorporation and licensure.
By allowing media to shift political campaigns to the revenue side of the ledger, rather than treat them as news, we’ve allowed the media to extract massive profit from politics at the expense of an unbiased effort of keeping the public informed. Simultaneously, at the expense of true representative democracy, we have allowed the candidates and the media significant control of the outcome of the elections. Until we resolve that juggernaut, the regulation of spending in political campaigns will, at best, be an extraordinary exercise in adjusting window décor. Mr. Margolis’ argument is partly correct; the biggest obstruction to fair, informative, political campaign discourse isn’t the amount of money being spent – but rather it’s who’s made wealthy by the spending.
