Campaign reform and other myths

KENNETT, Mo. -- Those among us who cheered enactment of the grandly titled Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act -- which, we were told, would provide relief from the mad-money election campaigns of the past -- may want to recount our shares of Enron stock for a touch of reality.

Unfortunately, neither the assurances from those who participated full-force in the dreadful spectacles of raising millions from private sources to carry out the public good nor those who believed the comforting words of Enron officials as to the liquidity of their hide-and-seek corporate con game is worth whatever paper either is written on.

We've been had, folks, and I hope I'm not being cynical when I say that too many of our delusions exist about the efficiency of politicians' promises to clean up their own mess or any expressed concern for the common man by multimillion-dollar corporate officials who believe their first obligation is to their personal bank accounts.

When we hear the approval expressed by our fellow Missourian, Dick Gephardt, who is already out begging campaign contributions for another presidential race two years from now, and his blessing for the McCain-Feingold law, we know the measure has already been closely inspected and found harmless by aspiring candidates on both sides of the Capitol Hill divide.

To be perfectly frank, when I hear any of the hundreds of past participants in the campaign-fund robberies that have occurred in our country for the past decade assure his or her constituents that the new reforms will actually work, making the best-laid innocence pleas of such creeps as Kenneth Lay, Bernard Ebbers, John Rigas, Dennis Kozlowski and, yes, even Martha Stewart, worth no more than their 49-cent corporate stocks that once bore price tags of hundreds of dollars, it's hard to believe.

If any of us believe Joseph Berardino, former multimillionaire who sent Arthur Andersen accountants across the land to lie for those who hired them, was unaware of the horrendous fraud being foisted on the rest of America, then you probably need a guardian to manage your bank account.

All of this occurred not by accident, that's for sure, but because of the results of an election held less than two years ago in America, when more than 90 percent of the incumbents running for re-election won another term. Anyone who can read a financial statement knew back in 2000 that little was going to change in Congress, where the laws of the land are written and scripted to aid those who made it all possible: High-flying, wealthy backers of the evenly divided status quo.

If this doesn't convince us of the need for real campaign reform and real teeth in enforcement laws, then nothing else will. Unfortunately, we'll not be getting such relief from the new Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, and this guarantee comes from unimpeachable, nonpartisan studies. What study sponsors -- The Center for Public Integrity, Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics -- discovered after digging through thousands of reports, sworn statements and ledgers of state agencies is that regardless of the rules, those who choose to break them can do so with virtual impunity, failing to provide complete, documented information, by hedging reports under suspicion and/or by taking the Fifth Amendment and thus closing the door on discovery.

Because Missouri ranked fifth among all 50 states in the amount of money spent or raised in the 2000 campaign, the study groups attempted to find source and allocation of more than $30 million handled by our Democratic and Republican state committees, which in terms of difficulty would not be unlike convincing the U.S. Supreme Court it might have erred in declaring the electoral winner in a Florida election.

Since no one in Jefferson City appears to have heard of, much less inaugurated, the concept of performance-based spending and since officials after 11 years under a voter-approved ethics law have been unable to install, much less make operational, an extremely expensive computer-based tracking system, trying to find hidden campaign cash in the show-me state is like looking for a Bible in bin Laden's library.

The Missouri Ethics Commission has yet to provide citizens with lobbyist spending during legislative sessions, a commonly known fact that wildly encourages anyone contemplating the purchase of legislators' votes on the third floor of the state Capitol. If the state doesn't know how much Capitol lobbyist John Britton spent to promote the interests of Budweiser, how could anyone come up with an accurate figure on how much Enron spent on utility rules or Southwestern Bell on state monopolies?

Before we get too wrapped up in the hidden loopholes in federal or state legislation, perhaps it's worth mentioning that John Q. and Mary Public have a role to play in some of our finger-pointing exercises. The reason U.S. and Missouri candidates work to raise more money for a single-year campaign than it takes to start a medium-sized factory ought to be obvious to all of us: money is needed to conduct campaigns that hopefully will interest, even motivate indifferent voters.

The reason campaigns today are different than when our grandparents were voters can be tracked to public apathy, plain old American-style indifference. No one wins an election by boring the voters into a deeper state of lethargy.

Campaigns are won by enticing the voters, and this comes about only when candidates either make fools of themselves or blame opponents for all the world's sins. This takes large campaign staffs, issue polls, doubled television rates, brass bands and leased airplanes as well as scores of telephones and computers, printing, fund raisers, campaign consultants, mailing costs, office rent, travel expenses, hotel bills, donations to all kinds of favorite charities -- and more and more and more money.

Oh, did I mention money?

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.