MISSOURI WATCH: MONEY: ROOT OF POLITICS

Not long ago a Missouri member of Congress, discussing the current state of American politics, cynically observed that as long as the importance of money was the principal component of getting elected to office, he felt safe in his incumbency. "Let's face it," he said as he embellished his thesis, "I can out-raise any candidate out there, qualified or not, and if I can out-spend him, I will outlast him."

Whether we voters realize it or not, we have arrived at a moment never envisioned by the Founding Fathers, who may never have recognized that money would become the most pervasive element in American elections, so much so that the first consideration of any candidate seeking virtually any public office at any level today is how much money will be needed to make the race.

In just one generation, we have gone from an expenditure of $12,000, which was the amount Harry Truman spent in his first race for the U.S. Senate in 1934, to $8 million, which was spent by two candidates for the same office in 1994.

The tragedy is not in the wasted expenditure of money but in the qualifier for public service that it presents to each and every potential candidate. The added tragedy is that, once elected, the officeholder must continue the odious task of soliciting still more funds just to maintain himself in office and discourage those who could challenge him at the next election.

Missourians should be particularly sensitive to this disturbing turn of events since we have lost the services of two able U.S. senators, both of whom had grown weary of courting cash rather than public understanding. Tom Eagleton and Jack Danforth both understandably hated to face each day in office where the first priority was raising money through the massaging of big-money sources, and both cited this need as one of the principal reasons for retiring.

A candidate for the U.S. Senate who plans to spend $10 million in seeking the office must raise nearly $5,000 each and every day for six years to reach his goal. Still puzzling to both incumbents and challengers is how one accomplishes this and still retains at least some degree of independence from private interests and those who seek special dispensations.

As painful as this dilemma is to those actively engaged in politics, the danger to the American political system and to the American public is much greater, even threatening eventual self-destruction. The spending escalation long ago commenced, seemingly reaching a zenith in last year's U.S. Senate race in California, where one candidate actually expended more than $25 million. One would be foolish to predict that this outlandish expenditure would not be topped by yet another candidate in yet another race in the future.

The problem with this realistic threat to our electoral system is that no one can devise a way to solve it while gathering sufficient public support to implement it. Missouri is currently seeking to minimize the importance of campaign cash by limiting the amount of money a candidate can receive from any single source, but because conflicting solutions varied in the amounts, the entire process is in limbo, awaiting a court decision.

But anyone who believes this is the final solution, or even a partial one, is whistling "The Missouri Waltz." The moment the finally adjusted rules are in place, there will be sufficient variations employed to overturn the real objective of reducing the importance of money in campaigns. It really doesn't matter to a candidate seeking money whether he receives one $1,000 gift or four $250 checks since the total is the same. And since courts all the way to the highest one have ruled that a candidate has a constitutional right not to be limited to his total campaign spending, whatever laws the state enacts will be merely roadblocks, not obstacles, to curing the present dilemma.

Most Americans have rejected out of hand the only workable solution to the all-important problem, namely the public financing of state and political campaigns. Our first reaction to this proposal is the correct one: it's expensive and it's not incumbent on hard-working taxpayers to provide money for candidates seeking political office. But the objection does not solve the problem at hand, and it tends to convince the public that it has no stake in campaigns or who is elected, when just the opposite is true. The public has a far greater stake in elections than the candidates, since the public will be governed by the winners. As we have increasingly come to recognize, our lives are shaped in great measure by the winners of important state and federal elections by virtue of statutes enacted by them. Even if officials leave, their laws remain.

If we believe public financing it too expensive then we have forgotten how much we pay when special interest legislation is enacted under the sponsorship of heavy campaign contributors. We not only pay for these special privileges, as the multi billion-dollar cost of the savings and loan fiasco so aptly illustrates, but we pay for neglect of the public interest when special privileges have first call on the candidate's interest and activities.

Most voters feel current campaigns last far too long yet are powerless to change the amount of time our officials spend in getting elected. If public financing were in place, these campaigns could be shortened, voter interest would be focused and candidates would not be forced to court all kinds of unsavory sources for expensive, months-long television ads that add not one whit to understanding the issues.

Public financing would not only reduce the ultimate cost to society, but it would mandate control by the voters, not large donors. The alternative is continued debasement by the most expensive, least effective way of fostering democracy.

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist who keeps tabs on government.