Letter to the Editor: Referendum?

I see in the Pulse that a number of well-intentioned souls are pushing for a referendum on a proposed Constitutional Amendment to allow limits on political campaign spending. The proposal states that only human beings – not corporations, unions, nonprofit organizations, or similar associations – are endowed with constitutional rights, and money is not speech, and therefore limiting political contributions and spending is not equivalent to restricting political speech.

What problem is being corrected here? Is this to help insure that no candidate has an “unfair” advantage? Well, then the solution is to mandate that each candidate spend exactly the same amount of money. But this proposal doesn’t do that, nor does it place limits on the personal spending of the candidate himself. So would we see a steady stream of billionaires successfully running for office?

It’s possible that the importance of money is overrated. Mrs. Clinton outspent Mr. Trump by nearly 2 to 1. But who can deny that Trump was the superior campaigner, regardless of the Clinton treasure chest. Yes, the statistics show that normally, the candidate with the most money wins. But normally the winning candidate is the incumbent, who raises more money because he is the incumbent, regardless of party.

I am uneasy about the statement that organizations have no constitutional rights. That’s the kind of statement that will for sure cause problems once slick lawyers start quoting it in a court of law. I am also uneasy about the government telling us how we (or orgs) can (or cannot) spend our (their) money. Remember that “pursuit of happiness” line?

If we are looking for a bogie man in the election process, let’s look at the media. They are the opinion shapers. Watch the late-night “comedians” lately? SNL? I’d say we are exposed to about $10 zillion worth of negative political ads every night. Then read the editorials and the letters to the editor that the papers choose to print. Which politician is lazy, stupid, immoral, nuts, etc? And how about the political radio and TV shows – all with a partisan agenda. This stuff is absolutely free! Campaign donations pale in front of this everyday pounding.

Many of us still remember the days of Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin. He was famous for spending next to nothing in his (successful!) political campaigns. Why? The media made him famous for spending next to nothing! Proxmire would go down to the Packer parking lot on game day, and shake hands with everybody he could find. The media would report that he had shaken, say, 5,000 hands that day. (I don’t know who was counting). What a guy he was! He didn’t spend any money campaigning! There’d be TV coverage of him shaking hands, and favorable interviews with people who had shaken his hand. What was all that coverage worth to Proxmire? A hundred thousand? No, he didn’t have to spend money. The media took care of his publicity. He was a great politician.

Anyway, I think this feel-good initiative will lose steam after people start thinking more about it. I doubt it would solve anything (what election, if any, would have been settled differently?), and the wording has the potential to come back and bite us some day.

Tom Felhofer

Union, Wis.