Bribery in American Political Life

George Will began his recent column on lobbying with this lovely turn of phrase:

Before evolution produced creatures of our perfection, there was a three-ton dinosaur, the stegosaurus, so neurologically sluggish that when its tail was injured, significant time elapsed before news of the trauma meandered up its long spine to its walnut-size brain. This primitive beast, not the dignified elephant, should be the symbol of House Republicans.

He then goes on to the problem of bribery in American political life. Although some politicians are a bit too crass in this practice, such as Duke Cunningham, campaign financing is nothing more than an elaborate system of bribery. In my pre-libertarian days, I was a big fan of campaign finance reform and it was for a while my hot-button issue*. But I have since realized that attempting to confine campaign contributions or replace them with public funding does not address the sources of political prostitution.

First, voters must collectively shoulder much -- if not most -- of the blame for the system of de facto bribery in government. The premise of campaign finance reform efforts is that if Candidate X has twice as much money as Candidate Y, then Candidate X will win election, even if said candidate now owes enormous favors to lobbyists. This view of elections assumes that voters will pull the lever for whatever candidate spends the most on campaigning, regardless of political views. While accurate, it leaves no responsibility on the voter to make informed decisions about public policy. I offer no solution to this problem, but only point to the real source of the bribery problem: a complacent electorate whose decision-making autonomy is on par with a hamster pushing a lever. It is not lobbyists and interest groups that are the problem. We are.

Second, to which Will devotes most of his column, the very power of government inspires a need to corrupt it. Because the federal government has taken up so much decision-making authority from state and local governments, as well as individuals, there is great interest in controlling said authority. Take, for example, education. The Constitution does not delegate any authority on this subject to federal government, therefore it does not have any. Yet, in its infinite wisdom, our overseers have decided to provide funding and laws to regulate and control much of what occurs in public schools across the country. Consequently, every group of educators who desires to have those decisions swing their way or to put those public funds in their pockets lobbies for government decisions friendly to their needs.

Now if the federal government obeyed the Constitution and made no decisions or offered no public funding in the domain of education, why would educational lobbyists hang out in Washington?

They wouldn't. Thus saith George Will:

The national pastime is no longer baseball, it is rent-seeking -- bending public power for private advantage. There are two reasons why rent-seeking has become so lurid, but those reasons for today's dystopian politics are reasons why most suggested cures seem utopian.

The first reason is big government -- the regulatory state. This year Washington will disperse $2.6 trillion, which is a small portion of Washington's economic consequences, considering the costs and benefits distributed by incessant fiddling with the tax code, and by government's regulatory fidgets.

[snip]

The way to reduce rent-seeking is to reduce the government's role in the allocation of wealth and opportunity. People serious about reducing the role of money in politics should be serious about reducing the role of politics in distributing money. But those most eager to do the former -- liberals, generally -- are the least eager to do the latter.

I won't pick on liberals as Will has, since conservatives (or more precisely, Republicans) seem to have zero interest in reducing the size and power of the federal government any more than their counterparts across the aisle. Observe that the Clinton Administration's semi-balanced budget disappeared about five years ago, roughly at the time that he left office.

But, as Will says, we can reduce bribery if we reduce the motivation to bribe by reducing the power of those being bribed to do particular things. Reduce, but not eliminate, as there are certain essential functions of government (e.g. defense) that must exist and will therefore attack lobbying buzzards.


*I eventually realized that various campaign finance reform schemes sounded like good ideas until you actually sat down to write the laws to enact them. One can say in a speech "Wouldn't it be nice if people didn't bribe their representatives to do certain things" but when transmitted into actual law that sentiment turns into "No one may take a public position on a candidate within 30 days of an election" and so on. Whatever perceived good may come out of campaign finance reform, it simply wouldn't be worth the cost to free speech, nor would it motivate or enable hamster voters to get off their lazy butts and act like real citizens.

Hat tip.