Why has reforming campaign finance been difficult?
I think that reforming campaign finance has been challenging due to the personal interests of politicians. This is because, firstly, that campaign finance regulates the activities and advertising power of a candidate or incumbent, and I doubt that any politician would pass reform hindering their own political race or allow their compatriots and party members to do so. In addition, I would suggest that reform has been difficult due to the domination of Congress at the hands of the Democrat and Republican parties, the two major players in America’s two-party system.
Firstly, I think that campaign finance reform has been tentative and difficult because of an unwillingness to pass it from the Republicans and Democrats. This is because the majority of reform proposals would limit the monetary lead that they currently have over other parties in Presidential Elections. This is why, I believe, that proposals for reform from pressure groups such as Clear Cause have been unsuccessful and their needs and requests have not been met. For example, in the most recent 2008 Presidential Election the Democrat nominee, Barack Obama, spent nearly $650 million on his campaign, opting out of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) public funding system. Obama’s electoral rival, Republican nominee John McCain managed to raise $360 million, just over half of what Obama used. I think that McCain’s loss demonstrates how a vast difference in funding leads to a decrease in political competition, and so Congressmen belonging to either of these main two parties would be reluctant to pass a reform that limited the funds they could employ in a campaign, thus allowing other, smaller parties to contest the Presidential race. This amount of funding also demonstrates the occurrences of candidates exploiting loopholes in the Bi-partisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) and FECA.
