A Poisoned Well - Unsavory Campaign Contributions

The American public applies a peculiar logic to their elected officials causing a bifurcation of expectations into seemingly contradictory paths. Would be electors simultaneously ignore abjectly immoral acts of their rulers which the masses of people would usually condemn and overreact the rather insignificant occurrences which voters commit without thought of wrongdoing in their personal lives.

Politicians wallow regularly in vast bastions of corruption where they lie, cheat, steal, commit fraud, and sometimes even murder. A president can order an assassination and be met with cheers and jubilation. A general may approve an operation leading to hundreds of civilian casualties, with women and children laying slaughtered in the wake, and the many will not blink an eye at this “collateral damage” or simply the “nature of modern warfare”. A senator may make an impressive list of promises and pledges which he dismisses like spoiled clothing as soon as reaching elected office, but he does this merely in the name of compromise, bipartisanship, and just playing the game. Ridiculous justifications for these actions flow from the halls of academia or the annals of the old media to be eagerly gorged in a buffet style by the majority. Nearly a single member of the public would accept this sort of behavior in their personal life among acquaintances. Perhaps not a single one would commit these actions and allow themselves a comfortable night’s sleep. Yet they afford politicians such carte blanche with a jejune faith in their good intentions.

This could simply be explained by a general naivety applied to the ruling class, as I may as well call them. However, this explanation would easily be dispatched by the countless examples of people quibbling over mundane details which occur in political life. Hypocritical voices abound to lambast politicians for taking vacations as pressing issues sit in their queues, while they take ample vacation from their own jobs every year. In particular, the source of campaign contributions becomes scrutinized more heavily than salient features of a politician’s campaign such a voting record and the intricacies of their economic policy. Libertarian and internet favorite Ron Paul has been censured by many because of campaign contributions received from white supremacist leader of Stormfront, Don Black. Obviously, I posit that such accusations are hypocritical and unnecessary.

Essentially two real arguments may be levied against those taking contributions from unsavory companies or individuals. Either the contributions suggest that the candidate will use his political power to reward the donors to his campaign or the candidate shares some moral culpability with the individuals who finance his campaign. Although only the latter argument is generally applied to the specific Ron Paul case, both could be justifiable cited and so we will examine each of them.

The first objection suggests a necessary quid pro quo agreement between the politician and donating party. Given the substantial sums of money necessary to finance a campaign, and similarly the substantial sums of money stood to be loss or gained due to a particular governmental law or regulation, the temptation becomes nearly insurmountable even among good intentioned individuals to strike a back alley deal of this sort. I often criticize candidates based on just these grounds, but we should recognize an important distinction of not just mere expediency. A differentiation must occur between explicit cash for policy exchanges and de facto advantages acquired by beneficiaries if the supported candidate wins. Although important, this distinction becomes volatile and sometimes dependent of personal philosophies regarding the scope of proper government. To be explicit: A hypothetical contribution to the Obama campaign from British Petroleum, under the agreement that in return for the money Obama will give preferential treatment to BP including damage caps and exclusive drilling contracts, should be viewed differently than a contribution to the Paul campaign from IBM, because the company supposes that Paul’s lifting of sanctions on Iran will allow IBM to expand its market. The former agreement extends privilege to one party at the expense of another. The former agreement persuades a candidate rather than just financing his views. The former uses the might of government aggressively, rather than stepping back and allowing free transactions.

The Don Black support may very well be of the second agreement. Ron Paul champions civil liberties including those freedoms of press, speech, and assembly. Ron Paul alone among the candidates supports the right of association among private individuals and entities. Finally, it must not be ignored that even racists have other issues they may feel passionately about and such a contribution could easily represent support for the abolition of the income tax. It seems unlikely that his contribution indicates intent by Paul to promulgate a white supremacist agenda. His voting record would indicate unwillingness to compromise over his thirty year political career. The small contribution would hardly buy much in terms of influence, and Paul’s decentralized campaign relies on legions of small donors rather than a few particular keystones. Even ignoring these points, reason would dissuade anyone pursing this route. As reality demonstrates, it is simply much easier to use statist means for rent seeking purposes than attempting to work through the enterprise of free exchange.

While the Paul campaign may escape any potential slings and arrows screaming corruption, does he evade any collective sin by accepting such soiled money? Should the money be returned? Media pundits bombard him with these same questions, of course with the implicit suggestion that the money must be returned to avoid any guilt by association. To begin my criticism, many pundits argue this point using a straw man that can be particularly alluring before the fallaciousness of hypothetical becomes apparent. The complaint usually proceeds by saying, “Suppose Mr. A supports several concerning and morally devoid principles. If through his morally devoid actions Mr. A acquires a sum of money and if Mr. A gives this money to Mr. B , then Mr. B must return the money. Morality compels him to do so since the money originated in unscrupulous waters and since the acceptance of the money compels Mr. B to use it according to Mr. A’s dark intentions.”

Neither of these reasons actually hold true under close examination. The confusion in the last point comes from an inability to distinguish between two different transfers of money: a purchase and a donation. A purchase of goods involves the holder of the money transferring it to another party under the assumption of receiving something explicit in return. A donation simply entails a transfer of goods from party to another which may occur for a variety of reasons. In the latter, the recipient is not bound legally or morally in the specific use of the funds. We should be especially cognoscente of this point since the intentions of the donor will only be truly known by himself. More importantly we should reject the blind prerogative which requires one to return money to people we find to be socially undesirable. This moral edict could very well marginalize groups considered fringe that nonetheless deserve a place in political discourse, but as too often occurs, incur a radical label simply to suppress their influence.

Further, let us consider each of the two possible actions a candidate may take. As we have already seen, accepting the funds does not bind the candidate to use them in a particular fashion or to support a particular ideology. The candidate may then keep the funds and use them to further their personal political agenda, one of peace and freedom in the case of Ron Paul. Contrast this with the scenario where a candidate returns the donated money to the bigoted group from whence it came. Here we see a candidate removing funds from the relatively innocuous political process, funds which could be used to promote good moral principles of government, and returning them to the seedy organization originally providing the money. This case essentially entails the candidate donating money to the organization, thus ensuring that the money will be used to further morally abject philosophies. This mode of action appears to guarantee the very outcome it hopes to avoid.

While the public should no doubt pay close attention to a candidate’s funding, often times we focus on the more source of the money while diverting our attention away from the candidate and his platform itself. A donor list may suggest a great deal about a candidate and his positions, but it does just that. It will only suggest. Voters should diligently amalgamate great scores of information about each candidate when evaluating each situation and forming an opinion as a whole. Furthermore, voters would do well to remember politicians should not be readily absolved as such high crimes as murder and grand theft because they feebly hide behind curtains of prestige and office. If we evaluated politicians a little more as we evaluate our neighbors, our democracy might more closely approximate a rational system.