The Plague of Private Donations
In today’s world, for a politician to have even the slightest chance at getting into office, he or she must embark upon an arduous process of establishing a political campaign for the office. One of the primary issues plaguing America’s current system, however, is the problem of political campaign donations from private sources. These donations are somewhat necessary to political campaigns, if only from the perspective that money is necessary to run them, and that money has to come from somewhere. It could come from the candidate him or herself, but the amount of money spent on most political campaigns is enormous, and would likely be more than any candidate would like to spend. As a result, receiving donations from private sources, like companies or industries with ample money to spend, seems to be the most effective way to make the necessary amount of money to run a successful political campaign.
But most of the time, these donations to a political campaign do not come free of charge. They come with a price, which is often that the policies of the candidate be modified in order to be more in accordance with what the private donor might want. In this way, the political campaign is essentially spurred on not by the ideas and ideals of the candidate him or herself, but is instead shaped and progressed by the desires of private lobbies.
A recent action on March 26, 2010, in a US appeals court, struck down a restriction on how much money any individual group could contribute to political campaigns, be they political campaigns in favor of a candidate, or against a candidate. This ruling opens up the door for a tremendous amount of money to be donated to political campaigns in the coming congressional elections, as well as in the 2012 presidential election. Before this, there was another ruling that allowed for corporations to “spend freely to support or oppose federal candidates.” These rulings together allow for significantly more manipulation of political campaigns by parties and interests that should not truly have a say in the political process. But they will have a say, because they wield the tremendous sums of money necessary to affect American politicians.
Why do American political campaigns require so much money, anyway? Why can’t political campaigns simply function independently of these massive donations which come tethered to specific corporate interests? The answer is one of best explained via the tenets of game theory. If both political campaigns were to agree not to use donations, then yes, the overall political campaign system would likely improve. But any given political campaign could realize that if it did “cheat” by obtaining corporate donations, then it could have a significant advantage over its competing campaign. As a result, that political campaign will seek donations, which means that, in order to stay competitive the other campaign will, as well. Thus, the overall system is injured by both political campaigns trying to stay at pace with one another.
The answer to this problem is not a simple one, but it would seem that the first step would lie in repealing decisions like these that have been made in America’s higher courts. These decisions are quite clearly detrimental to the overall system, even though they do support the First Amendment. Coming up with a better compromise between the decision to support the First Amendment, and the decision to keep political campaigns clean and worthwhile, would be an important step in the right direction towards fixing America’s political campaign system.
