Buying of the President Interview with John Kerry (June 2007)

[ProSense]

Jules Witcover interviewed Kerry on June 13, 2007.

The first thing I would like to ask you your views on the future of the matching-funds system. Do you think that has any future? Do you think candidates who don’t opt out of the system can have any kind of reasonable chance to be nominated?

Providing you have a sufficient base, based on an issue of the moment or your own record and experience, it’s possible — I underscore “possible”— for a matching-fund candidate to win. But it’s much more difficult unless the matching funds are, themselves, reformed, so that you have a sufficient level of match that is guaranteed and a sufficient total level of funding timely delivered in the appropriate quantity. If that doesn’t happen, it is doomed. And frankly, it’s flawed, because it forces battleground-state campaigns rather than national campaigns. In my experience, we had to ration money, and in fact even pull out of three states where we were perilously close. And I believe if we could have stayed and afforded to stay, it would have made a world of difference. But the finance situation doesn’t allow that.

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How would you reform it?

You have to have a comprehensive reform. You have to have a limitation on these individual groups and the nature of their attacks. And you got to have some kind of response capacity. I mean, we ought to get back to some sort of equal time or other free advertising time. There are any number of options that have been on the table through the years. This lowest unit rate to candidates is a joke. I mean, the lowest unit rate is exorbitant. Campaigns spend tens of millions of dollars and the media, which are licensed by the federal government, walk off with these incredible amounts of money.

I have advocated that ever since I came here. I was one of the leading advocates of full campaign finance, public funding, full funding reform. I wrote the bill with David Boren and George Mitchell back in the ’80s. We actually passed it at one point. And George Herbert Walker Bush vetoed it. And I went with Bill Bradley and Joe Biden to visit with Clinton in 1993 in the Oval Office to persuade him to do campaign-finance reform when we had the majority of both houses and the White House. And he declined to do that. And I think we paid an enormous price for not having done that. But you have to have a comprehensive reform. I am not for Band-Aid reforms anymore. I am not for coming in and limiting Congress and what they can do here, and then individual groups can go out and just murder you on their own. Enough of that.

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Kerry also wrote and introduced a Clean Money, Clean Elections Act in 1997:

Snip...

The following year, a re-elected Kerry was in another lonely position as one of only five original sponsors of the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act, to provide for full public financing of Congressional elections. The measure would remove practically all special-interest money from House and Senate campaigns. (Kerry's colleagues were Wellstone, Leahy, John Glenn and Joe Biden--all Democrats.) "Kerry was totally into it," says Ellen Miller, former executive director of Public Campaign, a reform group pressing for the legislation. "He believes in this stuff."

In introducing the legislation, Kerry said on the Senate floor, "Special interest money is moving and dictating and governing the agenda of American politics.... If we want to regain the respect and confidence of the American people, and if we want to reconnect to them and reconnect them to our democracy, we have to get the special interest money out of politics." He was also a backer of the better-known McCain-Feingold legislation, a more modest and (some might say) problematic approach to campaign reform. But over the years he's pointed to the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act as the real reform. "It is a tough position in Congress to be for dramatic change in financing elections," says Miller. "It's gutsy to go out and say, 'Let's provide a financially leveled playing field so there is more competition for incumbents.' Kerry and Wellstone were the leaders and took a giant step. It was remarkable."

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[pacalo]

1. Kerry, Wellstone, Leahy, Glenn, & Biden deserve our gratitude.

I loved the idea of Kerry as president in '04 (I'm still grieving) & I loved the idea of Biden as president in '08. My radar for character is in tact.

[ProSense]

2. Nice comment. Thanks. n/t

[Luftmensch067]

3. Attention must be paid

This is a great man and a great public servant, quietly and clearly talking honesty and sense. I wish all the noisemakers in the pundit class and the blogosphere would stop shouting for a minute and just read/listen to this. They might find answers to some of their questions.

Thanks for posting!

[ProSense]

4. It's a great interview. n/t

[karynnj]

5. Reading the Senate speech given when he and Wellstone re-introduced their bill

after all that has happened in the last decade is amazing. The speech - if he updated the statistics and the law - as it was before McCain Feingold could be given NOW and be revolutionary. Kerry's record and positions make him the person who would really have made for change - his record is far more that of being an agent of change than any of the candidates. HRC, used S-CIP as the sole example of change she corrected - but Kerry, not HRC actually wrote parts of that bill. Kerry fought government corruption (BCCI), not Edwards.

Any way, here is the speech:
"Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to speak before you today about a critical challenge before this Senate--the challenge of reforming the way in which elections are conducted in the United States; the challenge of ending the ``moneyocracy'' that has turned our elections into auctions where public office is sold to the highest bidder. I want to implore the Congress to take meaningful steps this year to ban soft money, strengthen the Federal Election Commission, provide candidates the opportunity to pay for their campaigns with clean money, end the growing trend of dangerous sham issue ads, and meet the ultimate goal of restoring the rights of average Americans to have a stake in their democracy. Today I am proud to join with my colleague from Minnesota, PAUL WELLSTONE, to introduce the ``Clean Money'' bill which I believe will help all of us entrusted to shape public policy to arrive at a point where we can truly say we are rebuilding Americans' faith in our democracy.
For the last 10 years, I have stood before you to push for comprehensive campaign reform. We have made nips and tucks at the edges of the system, but we have always found excuses to hold us back from making the system work. It's long past time that we act--in a comprehensive way--to curtail the way in which soft money and the big special interest dollars are crowding ordinary citizens out of this political system.
Today the political system is being corrupted because there is too much unregulated, misused money circulating in an environment where candidates will do anything to get elected and where, too often, the special interests set the tone of debate more than the political leaders or the American people. Just consider the facts for a moment. The rising cost of seeking political office is outrageous. In 1996, House and Senate candidates spent more than $765 million, a 76% increase since 1990 and a six fold increase since 1976. Since 1976, the average cost for a winning Senate race went from $600,000 to $3.3 million, and in the arms race for campaign dollars in 1996 many of us were forced to spend significantly more than that. In constant dollars, we have seen an increase of over 100 percent in the money spent for Senatorial races from 1980 to 1994. Today Senators often spend more time on the phone ``dialing for dollars'' than on the Senate floor. The average Senator must raise $12,000 a week for six years to pay for his or her re-election campaign.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The use of soft money has exploded. In 1988, Democrats and Republicans raised a combined $45 million in soft money. In 1992 that number doubled to reach $90 million and in 1995-96 that number tripled to $262 million. This trend continues in this cycle. What's the impact of all that soft money? It means that the special interests are being heard. They're the ones with the influence. But ordinary citizens can't compete. Fewer than one third of one percent of eligible voters donated more than $250 in the electoral cycle of 1996. They're on the sidelines in what is becoming a coin-operated political system.
The American people want us to act today to forge a better system. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 77% of the public believes that campaign finance reform is needed ``because there is too much money being spent on political campaigns, which leads to excessive influence by special interests and wealthy individuals at the expense of average people.'' Last spring a New York Times found that an astonishing 91% of the public favor a fundamental transformation of this system.
Cynics say that the American people don't care about campaign finance. It's not true. Citizens just don't believe we'll have the courage to act--they're fed up with our defense of the status quo. They're disturbed by our fear of moving away from this status quo which is destroying our democracy. Soft money, political experts tell us, is good for incumbents, good for those of us within the system already. Well, nothing can be good for any elected official that hurts our democracy, that drives citizens out of the process, and which keeps politicians glued to the phone raising money when they ought to be doing the people's business. Let's put aside the status quo, and let's act today to restore our democracy, to make it once more all that the founders promised it could be.
Let us pass the Clean Mo ney Bill to restore faith in our government in this age when it has been so badly eroded.
Let us recognize that the faith in government and in our political process which leads Americans to go to town hall meetings, or to attend local caucuses, or even to vote--that faith which makes political expression worthwhile for ordinary working Americans--is being threatened by a political system that appears to reward the special interests that can play the game and the politicians who can game the system.
Each time we have debated campaign finance reform in this Senate, too many of our colleagues have safeguarded the status quo under the guise of protecting the political speech of the Fortune 500. But today we must pass campaign finance reform to protect the political voice of the 250 million ordinary, working Americans without a fortune. It is their dwindling faith in our political system that must be restored.
Twenty five years ago, I sat before the Foreign Relations Committee, a young veteran having returned from Vietnam. Behind me sat hundreds of veterans committed to ending the war the Vietnam War. Even then we questioned whether ordinary Americans, battle scarred veterans, could have a voice in a political system where the costs of campaigns, the price of elected office seemed prohibitive. Young men who had put their life on the front lines for their country were worried that the wall of special interests between the people and their government might have been too thick even then for our voices to be heard in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.
But we had a reserve of faith left, some belief in the promise and the influence of political expression for all Americans. That sliver of faith saved lives. Ordinary citizens stopped a war that had taken 59,000 American lives.
Every time in the history of this republic when we have faced a moral challenge, there has been enough faith in our democracy to stir the passions of ordinary Americans to act--to write to their Members of Congress; to come to Washington and speak with us one on one; to walk door to door on behalf of issues and candidates; and to vote on election day for people they believe will fight for them in Washington.
It's the activism of citizens in our democracy that has made the American experiment a success. Ordinary citizens--at the most critical moments in our history--were filled with a sense of efficacy. They believed they had influence in their government.

Today those same citizens are turning away from our political system. They believe the only kind of influence left in American politics is the kind you wield with a checkbook. The senior citizen living on a social security check knows her influence is inconsequential compared to the interest group that can saturate a media market with a million dollars in ads that play fast and loose with the facts. The mother struggling to find decent health care for her children knows her influence is trivial compared to the special interests on K Street that can deliver contributions to incumbent politicians struggling to stay in office.
But I would remind you that whenever our country faces a challenge, it is not the special interests, but rather the average citizen, who holds the responsibility to protect our nation. The next time our nation faces a crisis and the people's voice needs to be heard to turn the tide of history, will the average American believe enough in the process to give words to the feelings beyond the beltway, the currents of public opinion that run beneath the surface of our political dialogue?
In times of real challenge for our country in the years to come, will the young people speak up once again? Not if we continue to hand over control of our political system to the special interests who can infuse the system with soft money and with phony television ads that make a mockery of the issues.
The children of the generation that fought to lower the voting age to 18 are abandoning the voting booth themselves. Polls reveal they believe it is more likely that they'll be abducted by aliens than it is that their vote will make a real difference. For America's young people the MTV Voter Participation Challenge ``Choose or Lose'' has become a cynical joke. In their minds, the choice has already been lost--lost to the special interests. That is a loss this Senate should take very seriously. That is tremendous damage done to our democracy, damage we have a responsibility in this Senate to repair. Mr. President, with this legislation we are introducing today, we can begin that effort--we can repair and revitalize our political process, and we can guarantee ``clean elections'' funded by ``clean money,'' elections where our citizens are the ones who make the difference."

[ProSense]

9. Thanks for posting this. n/t

[mogster]

6. K&R n/t

[ProSense]

7. Kick! n/t

[politicasista]

8. kick n/t