By Patrick J. Buchanan
Just before Super Tuesday, a mysterious ad began running in the three critical states that would decide the Republican nominee. Described by the New York Times as "flaw[ed] in every claim," the ad savaged the environmental record of John McCain.
A committee called “Republicans for Clean Air” had paid $2.5 million to run the ad. Two days later, we learned the committee was a front for a pair of billionaire brothers, the Wyly Boys, Bush-backers from Texas using a Virginia P.O. Box.
The Democrats come out no cleaner. As Al Gore was preaching campaign reform, his friend Maria Hsia was convicted of channeling $109,000 in illegal contributions to Democrats, including $65,000 from Al’s “community outreach” visit to that Buddhist Temple.
Nor are the other champions of reform untainted. The Wall Street Journal found John McCain’s campaign "crawling with lobbyists." According to the New York Times, Bill Bradley was a "top recipient" of corporate contributions in the 1980s, and in 1996 took more all-expenses-paid junkets than any other senator.
Friends, neither Beltway party is going to drain this swamp, because to them it is not a swamp at all, but a protected wetland and their natural habitat. They swim in it, feed in it, spawn in it.
Washington is a city where corporate PACs bid against union PACs to contribute to congressional PACs. Each month, Washington lobbyists spend $100 million to influence Congress. In 1996, the two Beltway parties raked in a record $262 million in soft money. This year, the two expect to take in half a billion dollars. What does that kind of cash buy?
Carl Lindner knows. In 1995 the first case the United States took to the WTO was not about steel dumping or pirating computer software. It was about getting bananas into the European market. Why, when the U.S. doesn’t even grow bananas? Perhaps because Carl Lindner, the CEO of Chiquita, wrote a $500,000 check to the Republican Party, then did the same for Bill Clinton’s party, and got an overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom as a bonus. Thus, in grateful tribute to Carl Lindner, the United States has been waging a trade war with Europe, over bananas grown in Honduras.
Scan the contributions of major American corporations, and you’ll see a pattern. Last year, AT&T gave $555,000 to Democrats, $760,000 to Republicans. Microsoft gave $351,000 to Democrats, $446,000 to Republicans. According to the Wall Street Journal, “More than three dozen major corporations hedged their bets in 1999 by cutting checks of roughly equal size to House Democrats and Republicans.” Because the same Fortune 500 companies subsidize and sustain both Beltway Parties, more and more you find the establishments of both these parties singing from the same corporate song sheet.
What is this money buying? Your laws and your government.
In the great debate over NAFTA, you heard all the arguments of the classical liberals about free trade going arm-in-arm with social progress. What you may not have heard is that NAFTA would enable the collective members of the National Association of Manufacturers to shut down plants in the U.S. and open them in Mexico, where there’s no OSHA, no EPA, no Social Security tax, and you can hire good workers for $2 an hour instead of $20 an hour in the states.
Seven years after NAFTA, there are 4000 fresh factories, most of them U.S. owned, in Mexico; and Mexico exports ten times as many cars to the United States as we export to Mexico. What NAFTA was really all about was letting GM and Ford say adios to the USA. And the stock prices of auto companies and the stock options of auto executives prove it was an excellent investment. But, ask the autoworkers of Michigan, now tending bar in Flint, how NAFTA worked for their families.
How is it that U.S. missile technology is transferred to Beijing to improve its Long March rockets? One way is Bernard Schwartz’s way. Over six years, this CEO of Loral Space gave $1.3 million to the Democratic National Committee: its No. 1 contributor in 1997. In return, Bill Clinton gave Loral a waiver, to let China launch its satellites, even though the FBI was investigating whether Loral had already provided criminal assistance to Beijing’s ballistic missile program.
The GOP denounced this as tantamount to treason, but, today, the GOP is itself trolling Silicon Valley for cash by promising a even more pro-China trade policy than Clinton, as China threatens Taiwan with war and the United States with missile attack. The Party of Ronald Reagan is dead; its successor is little more than the bellhop stand of the Business Roundtable.
Mark Hanna, William McKinley’s campaign manager, once said, "There are two important things in politics. The first is the money and I can’t remember the second." Al Gore is proof of Hanna’s Law. Caught in a White House shakedown of corporate executives, Al’s defense was: “No controlling legal authority” said he could not do it. Perhaps not, but where was his conscience? Where was his respect for the White House, this temple of our Republic, when he and Mr. Clinton turned it into a boiler room for the DNC?
But Al Gore is not alone at fault. Did you hear George Bush in those debates say that he could not support Senator McCain’s campaign finance reform because “it would hurt the Republican Party?” Phil Gramm says McCain’s “views on campaign finance reform would make the [Republican Party] the minority party for 25 years.” Another good argument for reform.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Bush told Tim Russert of NBC, "I am for banning soft money." Since then he volunteered his Pioneers to help raise $175 million for the RNC. Al Gore is no different. The day after calling for a soft-money ceasefire, he launched a program to enable the Democrats to match the GOP dollar for dollar.
But there is hope — because the iron is hot and both parties know it. Both are aware that there is an independent movement to clean up, or clean out, Washington. The 19 million who voted for Ross Perot in 1992; the economic patriots, union members, and environmental-ists who rallied at Seattle; the millions who rattled the Republican establishment this year — they’re not going away.
Because the Beltway parties are chemically dependent on soft money, they can’t change the system. But we can. We are free, as the other candidates are not because we are outside the system. We get no soft money, we take no PAC money. Let me repeat that: We get no soft money; we take no PAC money.
So let me propose today a broad plan to reform our politics and to return power to its rightful owners — the American people. First, let us adopt three principles to guide any reform: 1) All contributions to campaigns shall be voluntary. 2) All contributions shall come from citizens and voters, not corporations or unions. 3) All contributions must be disclosed 48 hours after their receipt.
Second, all members of the House and Senate should have to raise 50% of all campaign funds from their home states or districts. Let us put an end to the buying of House and Senate seats by Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.
Third, the First Amendment right of advocacy must not be abridged. Any group willing to disclose its affiliation, be it the Sierra Club or National Right to Life, must remain free to argue its case at the bar of public opinion.
Fourth, to enable little known and Third Party candidates to make their case, we should increase the individual contribution limit of $1000 set in 1974 to $3000, and index it for inflation.
But we will not break the stranglehold of the Beltway parties until we break up the incumbent protection racket. Republicans swept Congress in 1994 on a pledge to pass term limits. After their victory, House Majority Leader Dick Armey was quoted, "Now that we have elected a Republican House, maybe there is no more need for term limits."
Well, now that we have watched Congress in action, we need term limits, now more than ever. Seventy percent of the American people support term limits, and it’s time Congress passed a law to give the states the power to impose them, and wrote into that law a restriction on the Supreme Court’s right of review, so we don’t again have Justices serving for life rescuing the jobs of Congressmen who aspire to serve for life. Lifetime tenure is for Harvard professors, not members of Congress.
But even before term limits are imposed, let us remove one of the great incentives to stay forever on Capitol Hill, by terminating congressional pensions and letting members set up their own 401Ks. When Newt Gingrich left Congress, he walked away with a vested pension worth $4 million. Anyone here think that is proper compensation for Newt’s service?
When I was considering leaving the GOP to join the Reform Party, I began to study the ballot requirements. I learned that a Democrat or Republican running for President needs 50-60,000 signatures, nationwide, to secure ballot access. An independent needs over a million. In Georgia, the hurdles are so high no independent congressional candidate has qualified since the ballot access law went into effect. In New York, the Pataki-Al D’Amato machine nearly succeeded in keeping John McCain off the ballot. If they can do that to McCain, imagine the odds against a candidate, running without a media spotlight, a big bankroll, or the establishment’s blessing.
The Democrats and Republicans have put the fix in for permanent control of the White House. What is Microsoft’s monopoly, compared to our political duopoly’s control of the Presidency and Congress of the greatest nation on earth?
The laws governing ballot access are set by state legislatures controlled by Republicans and Democrats. Neither has an interest in opening up the process to competition; both have a vested interest in the political lockout. A bill to correct these anti-democratic laws was introduced in Congress in 1985. While twice voted down, it has been reintroduced by Rep. Ron Paul. For all federal elections, it would set uniform federal standards for obtaining and qualifying signatures. It deserves swift passage.
Friends, look at what the bipartisan collusion is doing to engender a crisis of faith in our democracy. In December, Harvard’s Vanishing Voter Project found that only 23% of Americans agree that our two-party system really works; half the country wants the option of a third-party candidate. A recent study by the FEC ranked the U.S. 52nd out of 58 countries in voter turnout.
But in 1998, when national participation dropped to just 36%, a record 60% turned out to vote in Minnesota. What made the difference? Third-party candidate Jesse Ventura was included in televised debates in a state that had Same Day voter registration.
Both establishment parties oppose national Same Day voter registration, because they can’t pre-select "prime voters” to target with direct mail and scripted phone calls. And they are terrified of Third Party candidates in the national debates, seen by 70 million Americans, because they remember that Ross Perot’s 7% before the debates in 1992 shot to 19% after the debates.
We are going to do battle in a court of law, and the court of public opinion to be included in those Bush-Gore debates, because the American people have a right to hear a Reform Party candidate whose campaign they are paying for with their tax dollars. Our presence in those debates will unclot a system in which the elites of both parties have conspired to place the most critical issues — war or peace, patriotism versus globalism — beyond the reach of the electorate.
My friends, we need a realignment of American politics. Let one party support globalism, free trade and a New World Order where nations are no longer sovereign. But let the other party be populist and traditionalist, dedicated to an economic patriotism that puts American workers and farmers ahead of any Global Economy, and to an America First foreign policy that keeps our soldiers, sailors and airmen out of wars and crusades that are not the business of the United States. We are going to be that party.
The capstone of a comprehensive plan for political reform is a national initiative and referenda. In 1604, the British Parliament declared to James I, "The voice of the people, in the things of their knowledge, is as the voice of God." Twenty-four states give voters the right of initiative and referendum, and we’ve seen it exercised successfully where the popular will was blocked by legislative gridlock or judicial activism. In California, voters have over-ruled legislatures to cut property taxes, abolish quotas, and insure that all schoolchildren learn the English language.
Elitists argue that the popular initiative and referenda violate the principles of republicanism. But as Madison wrote,
As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power, it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory to recur to the same original authority whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish or new-model the power of government.
The day to “new-model the power of government” has come. While public cynicism runs high, so, too, does the will to reform. Citizens held hostage by the two parties, in unholy matrimony with the special interests, want more than just campaign finance reform. They want more than two establishment candidates offering reform rhetoric at the instigation of focus groups. They want authentic reform. Put another way, they want their country back. And we’re here to give it to them. Join us, and make it happen.
