Financing the 2000 Election - Book Review

Edited by David B. Magleby. Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2002, 274 pages.

Since 1960, the Citizens' Research Foundation has reported the costs of campaigns and political finance, especially in presidential elections. By all accounts, the foundation's efforts have proven to be reliable in its commitment to leading the way to understanding the benefits and pitfalls of political finance. Continuing in this tradition, David B. Magleby has edited a readable and well-planned eleventh edition of this quadrennial report.

In the previous book in this informative series, Wesley Joe and Clyde Wilcox ominously warned that the 1996 elections would likely be the "last regulated campaign," and the evidence mustered in every chapter here strongly suggests that they were correct. In fact, Financing the 2000 Election makes clear that the regime of public disclosure and limits on contributions and expenditures created in 1971 by the Federal Election Campaign Act and its subsequent amendments are all but dead. Put bluntly, the main point which is collectively shouted by the authors is that the campaign finance system is broken. They identify how, where, and why it has been brought to this sorry state of affairs.

In addition to the race for the White House, attention has been paid over the last several volumes to financing congressional campaigns and the role of interest groups in influencing elections, and this installment is no different. However, this edition goes further than previous ones by adding chapters on gubernatorial and state legislative elections as well as offering for the first time an exceptional treatment of financing judicial elections. To satiate those readers of past volumes, there is again a chapter devoted to the macro-level view of the 2000 elections which compares aggregate spending estimates to previous election cycles. There is also a unique chapter devoted to the nomination phase and then one on the general election. These help to highlight how the structure of the campaign and candidate competition served to escalate the search for money leading up to the election of 2000. One chapter in particular by Diana Dwyre and Robin Kolodny explains how the interaction of hard and soft money by the political parties at both the federal and state level appears to look like a money laundering operation which should be subject to congressional RICO laws. The book closes by assessing the prospects for reform and deregulation.

The elections of 2000 were important for many reasons which the editor and authors make clear. Among other things, it featured a presidential election with no incumbent, and one in which the cleavages surrounding the impeachment of Clinton were still on the minds of many. In addition, the congressional elections underscored that partisan control of both chambers hung in the balance of some close races. Decennial redistricting was also looming on the horizon, and this enhanced the need to elect state legislatures and judges who would be deemed friendly to the cause of one's own political party. Finally, the precedents set in the 1996 election, especially with the help of contribution-maximizing rulings by the courts and the Federal Election Commission, virtually insured that the 2000 election would be one to remember or forget, depending on your point of view.

Among the many important points made in the book is the paradoxical loss of candidate control over their own campaign themes and messages at the same time that parties and interest groups were raising funds at an unprecedented rate. This situation occurred precisely because of the enormity of expenditures outside of the regulated regime of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) for two reinforcing reasons. First, because of the soft money directed by national party and congressional committees, the parties occasionally did not reinforce the messages run by their own congressional candidates. Second, the explosion of "issue advocacy," which adeptly avoided expressly advocating the election or defeat of specific candidates yet made clear in whose favor the advertisements were run made a mockery of the campaign finance system. By not mentioning the magic words so judiciously set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Buckley v Valeo court decision, both political parties and a host of interest groups were able to escape many of the disclosure provisions of FECA. In fact, several authors make the point more than once that estimations of campaign finance are much more difficult than at any time since FECA because so much campaign activity is now legally undisclosed. Thus, it is not surprising that for the first time, "political parties spent more on television advertising than the presidential candidates themselves, most of it in issue advocacy advertising."

In combing each chapter, I felt like I was reading the next installment of a serial novel, one in which I abhor the plot, but the way the message is crafted and conveyed is too important and interesting to put down. Indeed, the presentation of the information was both the greatest strength and weakness of the book. Sometimes, the blur of data would overwhelm the senses to the point that I became almost numb to the message, but after awhile, the focus would return, and my anger would subside. No doubt teachers and researchers will find the book provides a good index, especially for an edited volume. Moreover, the citations in the footnotes are incredible. Each chapter is well-documented with plenty of self-explanatory tables, but unfortunately there is no list of tables or figures in the front to easily find them.

As a reviewer, I am expected to find the difficulties with the book, and one which stood out was the lack of discussion concerning how the system is fraught with moral hazard. Indeed, the contemporary campaign finance system is analogous to the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. Perhaps connected to this was the disappointing lack of discussion about the possibility of changing the constitution to override adverse judicial interpretations or administrative rulings. It was almost maddening how all discussion of reforms revolved around what is possible within the current regime. Although it was a good starting point, I felt readers would have also been served by addressing how reliance on those who would be regulated may be part of the problem. But these minor quibbles are nothing compared to the important contribution to the field this book is bound to make.

This volume is thorough and eloquently documents the latest escalation of the current arms race in campaign finance. For students, journalists, pundits, and practitioners, and for those citizens and reformers who are not faint of heart, this book will be a welcome read. To ignore what the book makes obvious will most likely lead to greater depths of cynicism and come perilously close to de-legitimizing the political system itself, a point obviously not lost on the authors.

Reviewed by: Eric Prier. Florida Atlantic University

COPYRIGHT 2003 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group