Barack Obama’s campaign benefitted from a record haul in September, taking in more than $150 million. He has raised more than $600 million total in his presidential quest, and is outspending his rival three-to-one in television ads. Even Democratic veterans, including New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, marvel at this edge. “Obama has 40 local offices in my state — 40!” notes the governor.
Meanwhile, the McCain campaign decided to accept $84 million of taxpayers’ money to finance the final months of his campaign. This is certainly consistent with McCain’s championing so-called “campaign-finance reform” in one of his famed “reaching across the aisle” efforts to appease the Left (the same Left that’s raising record amounts of money).
McCain’s approach — turning to the government instead of individuals for support — rests on the assumption that there is something wrong, something manipulative, when individuals are asked to give to a cause they hope to advance. “The dam is broken,” he has said. “We’re now going to see huge amounts of money coming into political campaigns, and we know history tells us that always leads to scandal.”
But history doesn’t actually tell us that. Yesteryear’s more freewheeling fundraising efforts — including the Goldwater and Reagan reform movements — led to anything but corruption in the electoral process.
The last major long-term transformation of the national political landscape resulted in part from the visionary gift of one individual. Notre Dame dean Clarence Manion personally financed the publishing of prospective presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s manifesto, The Conscience of a Conservative. This book rallied conservatives behind a set of ideas and formed the basis of a national movement. Manion used his own and his family’s labor, and a network of nationwide contacts developed through his radio program, “The Manion Forum,” to enhance Senator Goldwater’s candidacy.
A Hollywood actor read the Manion-published book and fell in line. Ronald Reagan wrote in his autobiography, An American Life, “The Conscience of a Conservative contained a lot of the same points I’d been making in my speeches.” In fact, Reagan was so inspired by The Conscience of a Conservative that he gave a speech for Barry Goldwater to some businessmen assembled at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles in 1964. Reagan noted that, following his speech, he was asked by several members of the audience to join them in a discussion.
Henry Salvatori, Cy Rubel, and Holmes Tuttle were among that group. They urged Reagan to repeat the speech to a television audience. Together these California businessmen raised $100,000 to sponsor Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech. They also suggested a “trailer” be added to the tape to solicit more funds at the conclusion of the broadcast on NBC.
Reagan wrote of the reaction to the televised speech, “Thousands of people . . . called in pledging support to Barry and the party . . . [The speech] ultimately raised eight million .”
Reagan continued, “Of course, I didn’t know it then, but that speech was one of the most important milestones in my life.”
Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 election by record margins. However, that election and its conservative candidate elicited gifts from key individuals including Manion, Henry Salvatori, Cy Rubel, and Holmes Tuttle that played an absolutely crucial, long-term role in transforming the conservative movement and eventually achieving victory in the Cold War.
High-dollar gifts were not the only private financial contributions that had a transformative impact on the political landscape. Conservatives relied heavily on direct-mail communications, generally raising modest donations, from the early 1960s forward, and the mainstream news media and Left much vilified those letters. Even class-warfare advocate Thomas Frank acknowledges direct mail’s impact in his current book The Wrecking Crew, bemoaning, “Direct mail moved the country to the right.”
There is a steady wail from the Left, and from some on the Right, that the government must intervene to stifle politicians’ fundraising efforts. Yet, as my co-author and I detail in Funding Fathers, history shows that individual contributions — publishing a book without a major publisher, privately financing a groundbreaking speech, or pleading for money on a TV ad or in a direct-mail letter — often have a transformative and positive impact on American public life. Rather than being disparaged, regulated, or halted in favor of governmental financing, such acts of generosity ought to be applauded.
Ron Robinson is the co-author, with Nicole Hoplin, of Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement, released by Regnery Publishing (Washington, D.C. 2008).