The Chris Moeller Archives

Even pro-war campaigns face reality of broken system

John McCain's presidential campaign is gaining little traction. The Republican Senator's authorship of the Iraq War's so-called "surge" strategy, along with the candidate's support for immigration reform and extended amnesty for illegals, unpopular among those on the right-wing, has cut deeply into his grass-roots backing. Once the darling of the establishment press, the "maverick" McCain is now widely perceived as having pandered to the radical right on the war issue, while those voters, obviously, view his rightward turn in pursuit of a higher office as simply inauthentic. (Hillary, Inc. advisors, take note.) Poor money management and the negative perceptions of sagging poll numbers have reportedly left McCain's campaign operating in the red, and forced his team to consider accepting public financing to continue the White House bid.

The public financing system began in the 1970s in the wake of the Watergate criminal enterprise. (This blog is henceforth going to refrain from using the weasel word "scandal" when describing issues and events that could more accurately be termed "crimes.") The financing program set strict state-by-state fundraising limits on campaigns until such point each cycle that the political party in question selects its candidate at a national convention. In exchange for those limits, the public financing commission grants matching funds from the U.S. Treasury to the campaign.

What has happened during the three decades since Watergate, however, is that the level of private and corporate fundraising has increased to such a high level that nearly all the leading candidates simply choose to opt out of the public offering, eliminating the ceiling on campaign fundraising.

The simple solution to this problem would be to just eliminate the opt-out and have 100% public financing for elections, funded, perhaps, by a voluntary check-off on 1040 tax forms. Who could be opposed to such a practical solution? A hint: they're the same people who report the national and local news, and then, not coincidentally, never devote time and resource to this issue, having the most to lose financially. Public financing and free airtime for candidates on the "public" airwaves of television and radio would create greater voter choice, trust, and participation in the electoral process, but this is, of course, what our corporate paymasters fear the most-- an empowered populace alert to the crimes perpetrated against it.

According to a media analyst in the New York Times on Friday, television stations in Iowa will, between them, likely collect between $7 and $15 million in broadcasting revenue during the upcoming caucus season-- from Republican candidates alone-- and thus far, Democratic candidates have outraised their GOP kin on the money-collection circuit. I learned during my time in radio as a commercial scheduler that the flood of campaign cash during the caucus season in the state can virtually double station advertising revenue for that period. The rates for the candidate's 30- and 60-second ads can be set at any price level, provided only that it's the same for every candidate. This system directly funnels your campaign cash contributions into the coffers of these private media companies who, in turn, pay absolutely zero rent back to us to occupy their position on the public broadcasting spectrum.

Citizen McCain abandoned the mantel of radical election reform that most resonated with voters in 2000 for a turn as President Bush's lackey in our nation's war for corporate oil profits, and now the chickens are home to roost.

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Book recommendation: Evan Carton, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a much-needed biography of 19th Century radical abolitionist John Brown, entitled "Patriotic Treason," rescuing a courageous and moral American hero from the cellar of historic misinformation preaching that he was mentally unbalanced and sociopathic. What strikes me about Brown's story-- his armed militia attempt on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and failed plan to arm fugitive slaves-- is that the issues that plagued Brown's human liberation efforts in 1859 are the issues still with us today. A large number of Americans-- then as now-- falsely believe that political compromise is the great attribute of a democratic nation. It was a slaveholding Kentucky congressman, Henry Clay, with the support of a delegation of capitulating representatives from the north, that authored the Missouri Compromise in 1850, allowing territorial expansion of slavery into the west and writing into law the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced authorities in the north to capture runaway slaves and return them to their southern masters.

Carton argues that historians' dislike of Brown is linked to "the general predisposition of mainstream historians of the (Civil) war to serve as agents of national reconciliation by taking a dispassionate and equalizing view of the claims, motives, interests, and miscalculations of both the north and south." A true hero cannot exist in such a narrative. Reckless villains fit much better. Brown didn't believe in compromise. He believed that the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence were synonymous.

Henry David Thoreau believed that Brown's raid represented the lifting of a great stain, and that it served as the greatest possible catalyst for change. He called it "the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!"

Brown believed that the people of the 1850s needed a shock, "They have compromised so long that they think principles of right and wrong have no more any power on this earth." True patriots like Brown, says Carton, lead by both the force of their example and the shame of their suppression.

posted by CM @ 10:27 AM