[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 31, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10425-S10430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Ms. KLOBUCHAR (for herself, Mr. Alexander, and Mr. Lieberman):
S. 1905. A bill to provide for a rotating schedule for regional
selection of delegates to a national Presidential nominating
convention, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Rules and
Administration.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I joined Senators Klobuchar and
Lieberman in introducing the Regional Presidential Primary and Caucus
Act. Our legislation would establish a rotating schedule of regional
presidential primaries and caucuses.
We introduced this legislation because we agree that the Presidential
nomination system is broken. The American dream that ``any boy or girl
can grow up to be President'' has become a nightmare.
Crowded schedules and government restraints on contributions close
primaries to worthy competitors. States racing to schedule early
contests have made the nomination process too long and expensive. As a
result, media and money make decisions voters should make.
[[Page S10426]]
The National Football League schedules 16 contests over 5 months to
determine its champions. The Presidential nominating process uses the
equivalent of two preseason contests in Iowa and New Hampshire to
narrow the field to two or three and sometimes pick the winner.
If professional football were Presidential politics, SportsCenter
would pick the Super Bowl teams after two preseason games.
The problem is not Iowa and New Hampshire. The problem is what comes
after Iowa and New Hampshire. At least 18 States will choose delegates
in a 1-day traffic jam on February 5 next year.
The legislation we introduced today requires States to spread out the
primaries and caucuses into a series of regional contests over four
months. Beginning in 2012, States could only schedule primaries and
caucuses during the first weeks of March, April, May, and June of
Presidential years.
The traditional warm up contests in Iowa and New Hampshire would
still come first, but they would return to their proper role as ``off-
Broadway'' opportunities for lesser known candidates to become well-
enough known to compete on the 4-month-long big stage.
In addition, at the appropriate time I will offer an amendment to
this legislation that would allow Presidential candidates to raise up
to $20 million in individual contribution amounts of up to $10,000,
indexed for inflation. The current limit of $2,300 makes it too hard
for many worthy but unknown candidates to raise enough early money to
be taken seriously--leaving the field to the rich--who constitutionally
can spend their own funds--and famous.
Together, these two reforms--spreading out the primaries and allowing
a ``start-up'' fund for candidates--will increase the pool of good
candidates willing to run for the White House and give more Americans
the opportunity to hear their ideas and to cast a meaningful vote.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the following
documents printed in the Congressional Record: a David Broder column,
``No Way to Choose a President,'' that ran in the May 10, 2007 issue of
The Washington Post; Remarks that I delivered on the floor of the
Senate on February 2, 2004 titled ``Two Super Bowls''; and a lecture I
delivered at the Heritage Foundation on May 23, 1996 titled ``Off With
the Limits: What I Learned About Money and Politics When I Ran for
President.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From washingtonpost.com, May 10, 2007]
No Way To Choose a President
(By David S. Broder)
The true insanity of the altered presidential primary
schedule does not become apparent until you actually lay out
the proposed dates on a 2008 calendar.
The mad rush of states to advance their nominating contests
in hopes of gaining more influence has produced something so
contrary to the national interest that it cries out for
action.
The process is not over. Just last week, Florida jumped the
line by moving its primary up to Jan. 29, a week ahead of the
Feb. 5 date when--unbelievably--22 states may hold delegate
selection contests, either primaries or caucuses.
Florida's move crowds the traditional leadoff primary in
New Hampshire, which had been set for Jan. 22. And New
Hampshire is unhappy about the competition from two caucuses
planned even earlier in January, in Iowa and Nevada. So its
secretary of state, William M. Gardner, who has unilateral
authority to set the New Hampshire voting date, is
threatening to jump the rivals, even if it means voting
before New Year's Day.
This way lies madness.
Instead of there being a steady progression of contests,
challenging and whittling the field of contenders in the
wide-open races to select a successor to George W. Bush, it
is going to be a herky-jerky, feast-or-famine exercise that
looks more like Russian roulette than anything that tests who
can best fill the most powerful secular office on Earth.
As things stand, the earliest contests in Iowa, Nevada, New
Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida will be followed by
that indigestible glut of races on Feb. 5.
On that day, voters in the mega-states of California,
Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and
Texas will all be called upon to judge the fields of
contenders. And so will voters of 17 smaller states, ranging
from Alabama to Oregon and from Delaware to Utah.
Most of those voters will never have had an opportunity to
get even a glance at the candidates. All they will know is
what the ads tell them--and what the media can supply, when
reporters are exhausting themselves dashing after the race
from state to state.
Assuming everyone is not burned out, the survivors of this
ordeal will find things slowing to a crawl--and then
screeching to a halt.
Maryland and Virginia hold primaries on Feb. 12, and
Wisconsin a week later. Then there's a two-week gap, with
only the Hawaii and Idaho caucuses, until Massachusetts,
Minnesota, Ohio and Vermont vote on March 4.
At that point, presidential politics effectively stops for
more than two months. Between March 4 and the May 6 contests
in Indiana and North Carolina, the only scheduled events are
a primary in Mississippi and the Maine Republican caucuses.
This crazy calendar sets up one of two scenarios--both
scary. If one candidate in each party wraps up the nomination
by gaining momentum in the January contests and amassing
delegates on Feb. 5, we will be looking at the longest, most-
dragged-out general election ever. The conventions are late
in 2008; the Democrats' the last week in August, the
Republicans' the first week in September. The time from
February to Labor Day will be boring beyond belief.
But if nothing is decided by the night of Feb. 5, the
chance of a quirky result from the oddity of the political
geography of the remaining states will be greatly increased.
Democrats will have to compete in Indiana and North Carolina,
where they rarely win in November. Republicans will be judged
in Massachusetts and Vermont, where their party membership is
minuscule.
None of this helps the country get the best-qualified
candidates, and none of it helps either party put forward its
best candidate.
The situation screams for repair. In my view, the parties
would be well advised to make the necessary fixes themselves,
rather than wait for Congress to devise remedial legislation.
The mandate for the next pair of national party chairmen
should be to agree on a sensible national agenda for the
primaries--either a rotating regional system that gives all
states a turn at being early or a plan that allows a random
mix of states to vote, but only on dates fixed in advance by
the parties, and separated at intervals that allow voters to
consider seriously their choices.
It would be close to criminal to allow a repeat of this
coming year's folly in 2012.
____
Two Super Bowls
Mr. Alexander. Mr. President, I rise to propose that we
turn the Presidential nominating process over to the National
Football League, except for Super Bowl half-time shows. Then
maybe we can have a second Super Bowl, where anything is
possible and everyone can participate.
Take the example of our colleague Senator Kerry's team--I
am sure the Senator from Vermont will be quick to point out
it is the team of many Senators from New England--the New
England Patriots. Last night, they became the Super Bowl
champions.
On September 12, in the season's first game, the Buffalo
Bills trounced the Patriots 31 to 0. If this had been the
first-in-the-Nation Presidential nominating caucus, the
Patriots would have been toast. You know the pundits' rule:
Only three tickets out of Iowa. The Patriots certainly didn't
look like one of the three best professional football teams.
Then, the Washington Redskins defeated the Patriots, as
unlikely as it would have been for Dennis Kucinich to upend
Senator Kerry in New Hampshire. But in the National Football
League, upsets don't end the season. The Patriots played 14
more games. They won them all. Yesterday, they beat the
Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl for their 15th
consecutive win.
The National Football League schedules 20 weeks of contests
over 5 months to determine its champion. The Presidential
nominating process, on the other hand, uses the equivalent of
two preseason games in Iowa and New Hampshire to narrow the
field to two or three--and sometimes they effectively I pick
the winner.
The NFL wasn't always so wise. In the 1930s, league owners
rearranged schedules after the first few games so that teams
that were doing well could play one another. This was good
for the Chicago Bears, for example, but not for the league.
Fans in other cities quit going to the games--just as voters
in most States have quit voting in Presidential primaries.
Bears owner George Halas and others created today's
competitive system in which almost any one of 32 teams can
hope to make the playoffs. Green Bay can make it because the
league makes sure that even smalltown teams have enough
revenue. Prime-time television opportunities are rotated.
Each Monday, senior officials in the league's New York office
grade every call and no call to second-guess even the instant
replays.
Professional football has become America's game because it
symbolizes the most important aspect of the American
character: If you work hard and play by the rules, anything
is possible. As a result, 8 of 10 of the most watched network
television shows have been Super Bowls; 98 of the 100 best
watched cable television games have been NFL games.
Every September, the NFL fields 32 teams, almost all with a
shot at the playoffs. Every 4 years, the Presidential
nominating process does well to attract a half dozen credible
candidates for the biggest job in the world.
[[Page S10427]]
All but half are effectively eliminated after two contests.
If professional football were Presidential politics,
Sportscenter would pick the Super Bowl teams after 3 or 4
preseason games.
These two steps would fix the Presidential nominating
process:
No. 1, spread out the primaries. Twenty-eight primaries are
crammed into 5 weeks after New Hampshire. Congress should
assume the role of Paul Tagliabue. Create a window between
February and May during which primaries may be held every 2
weeks. Iowa and New Hampshire could still come first, but
they would become off-Broadway warmups and not the whole
show.
The second step that would fix the process would be to
allow more money--to raise their first $10 million, let
candidates collect individual ``start-up contributions'' of
up to $10,000. Today's $2,000 limit makes it impossible for
most potential candidates to imagine how to raise, say, $40
million. During 1995, when I was a candidate and the
individual limit on contributions was $1,000, I fattened 250
fundraisers in that 1 year to collect $10 million. The
combination of the new $2,000 limit, the increased coverage
of new cable channels, and the growth of the Internet have
made it easier to raise money.
Still all but Senator Kerry was short of cash after New
Hampshire. Put it this way: The Packers would never make it
to the playoffs under the revenue rules of Presidential
primaries.
Mr. President, 45,000 Iowans voted for John Kerry in the
first caucus. About 83,000 New Hampshirites voted for him in
the first primary. More Americans actually attended last
night's Super Bowl game in Houston, TX, than voted in either
Iowa or New Hampshire. Ninety million others watched the
Super Bowl game on television.
Perhaps we should learn something from America's game about
how to pick a President. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The Presiding Officer (Mr. Smith). The clerk will call the
roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. Alexander. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The Presiding Officer. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____
[Heritage Lecture #568, May 23, 1996.]
Off With the Limits: What I Learned About Money and Politics When I Ran
for President
(By Lamar Alexander)
On March 3, one day after the disastrous--for me--South
Carolina primary and three days before I withdrew from the
presidential race, I attended Sunday services at the
Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. The Rev. Frank
Harrington preached about how Joshua, after a great victory
at the Battle of Jericho, had been surprised and humiliated
in the battle of A'i--so humiliated that Joshua renamed A'i
the ``Valley of Calamity.'' He wanted his warriors always to
remember the lessons of what had happened there.
Walking out after the service, I asked Rev. Harrington,
``Was the point that I should rename South Carolina the
'Valley of Calamity?'''
``No,'' he said, ``the point is, you must learn lessons
from your defeat--and then pick yourself up and go on.''
The voters, in their wisdom, have given me a defeat, and
now several weeks to reflect upon its lessons. The Heritage
Foundation has invited me today to talk about one of those
lessons: the influence of money on the race for the
presidency. While my wounds are fresh, here is my view: The
so-called campaign reformers are selling the American people
a real bill of goods on this one. They are saying that limits
on what individuals can give to presidential campaigns and on
what candidates can spend will reduce the influence of money
and create a better democracy.
In fact, such limits do precisely the reverse. We now have
22 years of experience with them. Limits have increased the
influence of money and are dangerous to democracy. It is the
law of unintended consequences operating in all of its glory.
Instead of adding more limits, we should take the limits off
and rely on full disclosure to discourage corruption.
The limits on giving and spending for a presidential
campaign were well-intentioned, placed into federal law after
Watergate. Corporations can't give at all; political action
committees may give up to $5,000; and individuals may give up
to $1,000 during the primaries (the government pays for the
general election). In addition, there are limits on what a
candidate may spend in each state primary and a ceiling on
spending for the entire primary. The Federal Election
Commission enforces all of this.
The limits were designed to make things better for you, the
average voter, so let's look at what they have done. As a
result of these limits:
You are more likely to see a comet than meet a presidential
candidate, unless you have $1,000--or live in Iowa or New
Hampshire;
You have fewer choices of candidates;
The primary campaigns start before you care and end before
you have a chance to vote;
You are less likely to hear the candidates' messages;
Your nominee is more likely to be someone already holding
office, rather than an insurgent;
More of your choices are among candidates who are rich
enough to spend their own money; and
Washington, DC., has more to say about who the nominee is
and you have less. In short, the federal limits on giving and
spending during elections are turning presidential races into
playgrounds for the rich, the already famous, and the
Washington-based, and are helping to deprive most Americans
of the opportunity to cast a meaningful vote.
When we create a system for picking Presidents, I believe
our objectives should be these:
We should want the largest number of good candidates.
We should want a good opportunity to hear what they have to
say.
All of us, if possible, want the opportunity to cast a
meaningful vote. If this is also your set of objectives, then
here is my remedy: Off with the limits. Off with the limits
on individual contributions. Off with the spending limits.
Require maximum disclosure. Open up the system. Let the
candidates speak. Let us vote.
Three Disclaimers--Before you think it, let me say it:
First, I am not here to wallow in gloom. In fact, I come
away from the campaign more optimistic, not less. I would do
it again in a minute. I believe even more that there is very
little wrong with our country that more jobs, better schools,
and stronger families won't fix.
Second, I believe I can make these remarks in the spirit of
a gracious loser. That is made easier because our process
produced a nominee whom I respect, who is my friend, and who
I will be proud to call my President. Under any process, Bob
Dole was our party's most likely nominee this year. (I will
confess that my determination to be a gracious loser is
tested about once a week when I remember what another
defeated Tennessean, Davy Crockett, once said. Congressman
Crockett strode to the courthouse steps, faced the voters who
had just turned him out of office, and said what every
defeated candidate has always wanted to say to such
voters: ``I'm going to Texas and you can go to hell'')
Finally, I am not here to complain because Steve Forbes
spent $33 million of his own wealth on his presidential
campaign. I believe the First Amendment to our Constitution
gives Mr. Forbes the right to spend his money to advance his
views. The Rockefellers and Perots and Forbeses and du Ponts
all have made valuable contributions to our public life. I
hope they continue to do so. What I object to, as I will
discuss, is letting them spend all they want and then putting
limits on the rest of us. What I am arguing--that it is wrong
to put limits on giving and spending--runs smack in the face
of what we have been hearing ever since Watergate. So let me
take my points one by one. What I have to contribute is a
view from the inside. I will stick to my impressions and
stories from the road and let scholars here at Heritage and
elsewhere compile the statistics and perform the analysis.
Because of the limits, you're more likely to see a comet
than meet a presidential candidate, unless you have $1,000--
or live in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Of course, not everybody wants to meet a presidential
candidate. Walking across New Hampshire, I met a woman taking
a work break outside a shoe factory in Manchester. I stuck
out my hand and said, ``I'm Lamar Alexander. I'd like to be
your next President.'' She looked at me, and at my red and
black shirt, and said with disgust, ``That's all we need.
Another President!'' Congressman Mo Udall used to tell about
walking into a barber shop. ``I'm Mo Udall, running for
President,'' he said. ``Yeah, I know,'' the barber replied.
``We were just laughing about that yesterday.''
But if you are one of those persons who would actually like
to meet and size up someone who might be your President, get
your wallet ready because the $1,000 limit on giving forces
candidates to spend most of their time with people who can
give $1,000. As with many federal laws, these limits have
done just exactly the opposite of what they were intended to
do. Limits have increased the influence of money on the
candidates.
For example, to raise $10 million in 1995 for the Alexander
for President campaign, I traveled to 250 fund-raising
events. Now, think about this. This is about one event per
campaign day. This took 70 percent of all my time. As a
result, I became unusually well acquainted with a great many
good Americans capable of giving $1,000 (who probably
represent a cross section of about one percent of all the
people in the country). Wouldn't I have been a better
candidate, and the country better off had I been elected, if
I had spent more time traveling around America and visiting
allies abroad? (I actually did this during 1994, driving
8,800 miles across America and spending two months overseas.
This was when I was not spending most of my time meeting nice
people who could give me $1,000.)
Because of the limits, you have fewer choices for
President.
This is because, in the real world, a $1,000 limit on gifts
makes fund-raising so difficult that it discourages most
candidates. I will now wave my own red flag: It is important
not to get carried away with this argument. The difficulty of
raising money is sometimes just an excuse. There are other
more compelling reasons not to run for President.
[[Page S10428]]
For example, I recall in November of 1995, when Colin
Powell was on the cover of the news magazines and his
approval rating in the polls was, literally, higher than the
Pope's--and I was struggling to secure a paragraph in the
Keokuk, Iowa, daily--I was driving to the airport after a New
York fund-raiser with a former associate of General Powell's.
The unavoidable question arose, ``Will Colin run?'' The
former associate answered, ``I don't know. But I can tell you
two things about General Powell. One is, he makes rational
decisions. Two is, he doesn't like uncertainty.'' I knew from
that moment that, if that were true, there was no chance
whatsoever Colin would be a candidate. Running for President
is not a rational decision. It is instinctive. It is a
passion with a purpose. And it is most surely a symphony in
uncertainty. That is why I am so surprised that so many have
such a hard time taking Colin Powell at his word, that he
simply doesn't want to do it. Most people don't. They don't
want the job, or they are afraid they can't win, or more and
more they are unwilling to expose themselves and their
families to the scrutiny that comes with the candidacy.
Having said all of that, it is still true that the prospect
of trying to raise $20 million from contributions of $l,000
or less makes the race much less attractive and often
impossible for many good candidates. In 1995, Bill Bennett
told me he didn't know how to raise that kind of money. Jack
Kemp said he knew how but didn't want to. Dan Quayle and Dick
Cheney discovered it would have been very hard even for a
former Vice President and a former Defense Secretary; they
both decided not to become candidates.
You might have wondered this year, where have all the
governors gone? I don't think I have ever met a governor who
didn't think he or she would make an excellent President.
Seventeen of our Presidents have been governors. There are
today 32 Republican governors. One might argue (and I will
confess that I tried out this argument a few hundred times
during 1995) that the natural presidential partner for our
strong Republican congressional leaders would have been the
best of our Republican governors.
But at the end of 1995, not one sitting Republican governor
was in the race. Carroll Campbell, Tommy Thompson, and Bill
Weld, perhaps others, had considered it and drawn back,
privately saying, ``I can't raise the money.'' Even the
governor of California, Pete Wilson, who by my calculation is
governor of 5 percent of all the money in the world, could
not raise enough money. So, for Republicans, 1995 turned out
to be the year of the ``money primary.''
This is how it worked. There were, in the end, only four of
us who could find a way to raise enough money to run for
President. We all had certain advantages. For example, a
contribution to Bob Dole was also a contribution to the
respected Senate majority leader. Phil Gramm had worked
relentlessly for six years as chairman of the Senate
Republican Campaign Committee to build a list of 83,000 names
and a $5 million campaign kitty, which he then transferred to
his presidential account--a perfectly legal loophole, but
one which was unavailable to the governors or others not
holding office. Pat Buchanan was able to depend on direct
mail for smaller contributions because it was his second
race, he had been on network television for 15 years, and
he took, shall we say, especially noisy positions.
The Alexander campaign had some advantages, too:
exceptional national leadership and strong support at home.
Six of the last seven Republican national finance chairs
chaired our fund-raising. We began with a $2 million dinner
in Nashville on March 6, 1995, and raised $5.2 million in 21
events during the next six weeks. At the end of 1995, the
three zip codes in America which had contributed the most to
presidential campaigns were all in Nashville. By the time I
withdrew, we had raised nearly $13 million from 26,000
contributors, 8,800 of whom had given $1,000. (We received
another $4 million from federal matching funds.)
But after the initial $5.2 million spurt, it became much
harder for us. I was traveling to 20 events per month to
raise $500,000. This created logistical adventures of Desert
Storm proportions. On one day, I flew from Nashville to
Colorado Springs to Denver for fundraisers and then on to
Phoenix to be ready for an early morning breakfast. To
collect $20,000 during the crucial week before the Iowa
caucus, I ``dropped by'' Knoxville, Tennessee, on the way
from New Hampshire to Iowa. To raise another $30,000, I flew
from Sioux City, Iowa, to San Juan, Puerto Rico, one Sunday
in December. By the last four days of the New Hampshire
primary, we were running on empty except for the money set
aside for debts, audit, and winding down.
Then, when I placed a strong third in the Iowa caucus on
February 12, the money dam broke. Beginning three days after
Iowa, five days before the New Hampshire primary,
contributions started rolling in to our Nashville
headquarters at the rate of $1,000,000 a day without events.
This continued for every day except Sunday, until I withdrew
on March 6. Our once-a-week telephone conference calls
sometimes included more than 200 volunteer fund-raisers. But
it came too late, for New Hampshire ads had to be purchased
the Friday before the primary on Tuesday. I failed (by 7,000
votes) to overtake Senator Dole. The Republican nomination
was decided in the first primary.
Partly because of the limits, the campaign starts before
you care and ends before you have a chance to vote.
Not only did the campaign end early; it started
ridiculously early because, it seemed at the time, starting
early was the only way to raise the necessary amount of
money. In early 1995, Senator Gramm of Texas, flush with his
83,000 names and $5 million kitty, declared that it would
take $20 million to run for President, that he could raise it
and that he doubted many others could, and then sponsored a
$4 million kick-off dinner in Dallas and announced, ``Ready
cash is a candidate's best friend.''
None of the rest of us were about to be left behind. I held
my $2 million dinner in Nashville. Senator Dole jumped in, as
did others. Off we went, pounding the streets in 1995 trying
to raise money for a race in 1996. It was like trying to
stir up a conversation about football in the middle of the
NBA playoffs. For me, by mid-summer 1995, it was going
something like this interview:
From Washington, D.C., ``Inside Politics,'' Wolf Blitzer
(already bored with the long ``money primary''): ``Governor
Alexander, why do the polls show Senator Dole ahead of you 54
to 4 in Iowa?''
From Vermont, in my red and black shirt, Me (already tired
of being asked the same question for the 50th time): ``Wolf,
that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. The reason
Senator Dole is ahead of me is that everyone knows him and
nobody knows me.''
Now, add to the cost of creating such a long campaign the
usual costs of fund-raising. A rule of thumb is that it costs
30 cents to raise a dollar. That meant that of the $10
million we raised in 1995, about $3.5 million went for fund-
raising. Then there is the cost of complying with federal
regulations. Another $1 million of the $10 million we raised
during 1995 went for that. We set aside still another
$500,000 for the campaign audit, which usually takes years. I
think you can see where I am heading.
Add the costs of the long campaign to the usual costs of
fund-raising and complying with federal rules and, by the
time the 1995 money primary was over and the real primary in
1996 was here, the handful of us still standing (except for
Mr. Forbes) were running out of money. The Alexander campaign
spent $10 million during 1995, everything we raised, which
left us about $3 million in the bank (counting federal
matching funds) at the beginning of 1996. And, by comparison,
we were running a bare-bones effort. Senator Gramm had spent
$28 million when he dropped out just before the first primary
in midFebruary. Senator Dole had spent more than $30 million
by March 1 and, with 39 primaries yet to go, was coming
uncomfortably close to the federally imposed primary spending
ceiling. Steve Forbes spent $33 million before he dropped
out. I'm not sure whether my friend Pat has dropped out yet
or not!
The reason why the Republican nomination was decided in the
first primary is not only because limits on giving and
spending forced the campaigns to start early. It is also
because so many states moved their primaries to an earlier
date in an attempt to give their citizens the same privilege
Iowa and New Hampshire citizens have: the opportunity to cast
a meaningful vote to pick the first President of the new
century. This bunching of primaries created a wild roller
coaster ride through 38 states in the 25 days after New
Hampshire. Ironically, this made New Hampshire even more
important. Here was the law of unintended consequences
mischievously at work once again. The money primary became so
long and expensive that we all arrived financially exhausted
at the real starting line: New Hampshire, which turned out to
be the finish line as well. About the time the voters had
returned from the refrigerator to settle in and watch the
presidential campaign unfold and perhaps even to vote in it
the campaign had ended.
Because of the limits, you are less likely to hear the
candidates' message.
This is because limits on giving and spending prevent most
candidates from raising enough money to get across their
messages, especially if the candidate is relatively unknown
at the beginning. Let me offer an example. Yesterday's
Newsweek contains a column by Meg Greenfield which says this:
``The doomed Presidential campaign of Lamar Alexander should
tell the Republicans something. It was the quintessential
antigovernment pitch--complete with an implicit--and often
explicit--denial and disavowal of Alexander's career as a
government guy. He bombed.''
Well, now, this is the stuff of a pretty good debate. Of
course, I disagree with Ms. Greenfield. I think my campaign
nearly succeeded because I understand that the next President
must lead us to expect less from Washington and ask more of
ourselves, including our local governmental institutions. Ms.
Greenfield's and President Clinton's solution is more from
Washington. So let the debate begin.
Ms. Greenfield has her page in Newsweek. She is also
editorial director for the Washington Post. President Clinton
has the best forum of all. Their ``more from Washington''
side of the argument will get plenty of exposure. But what
about my ``more from us'' argument? I made my case in Iowa
during 80 visits and walked 100 miles across New Hampshire. I
found that in those small meetings I could be persuasive. I
also found that nothing much happened in the public opinion
polls until I was on television. ``Free TV''--the network
news--was not of much help (although some local stations were
very aggressive). To begin with, the national networks didn't
arrive until mid-January when the campaign was nearly over.
[[Page S10429]]
The Center for Media and Public Affairs watched all the
network newscasts in January and February, ten-and-one-half
hours of campaign coverage. The Center found that we nine
Republican candidates were allotted 79 minutes total. We were
allowed to present our views in seven-second sound bites. The
journalists covering us received five times as many minutes
of coverage on those same newscasts. What the journalists
said about us and our campaigns was more negative than what
we candidates said about each other. And more than half the
journalists' comments were about the horse race, not the
issues. The Freedom Forum, in a remarkable survey of the
journalists covering the presidential campaign, found that in
1992, 89 percent had voted for Bill Clinton. A candidate
cannot rely on ``Free TV'' to get his message across. That is
why, in our media-drenched society, where things are not
important unless they are on TV, a candidate must have money
for television to get a message across, and the limits on
giving and spending make it difficult for candidates to do
that.
This is not just one candidate's lament. Limits on giving
and spending are an affront to the First Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution. The whole idea of the framers of the Bill
of Rights was to keep the government from attempting to limit
political debate and criticism: ``Congress shall make no law
abridging the freedom of speech.'' In Buckley v. Valeo, the
Supreme Court acknowledged this and struck down most
congressional limits of this sort, but left standing the
current provisions because of its worry about ``corruption.''
I believe the better antidote to corruption is disclosure. To
correct something bad, we have created something worse.
Because of limits, your nominee is more likely to be an
incumbent than an insurgent.
In the real world, insurgents not only need more money than
incumbents; they need it early. The New York Times reported
that two-thirds of voters in New Hampshire made their minds
up during the last week before the primary, after the Iowa
caucuses. Among those voters, I won with 31 percent. Among
the one-third who voted before Iowa, I received six percent.
More money, earlier, might have helped get my message across
to those early deciders.
Candidates for President who already hold public office
have government-paid staffs of policy advisers, PR people,
and political administrators. They have name recognition and
franking privileges. They have a fund-raising advantage
because of their positions of power. If they are in
Washington, they have a huge media advantage because that is
where the media are. So putting a limit on what all
candidates can raise and spend turns out to be a protection
policy for some candidates: the ones who already enjoy the
perquisites of public office.
This is not just true in federal races. My home state,
Tennessee, has just limited contributions to governors' races
to $500. This is an enormous advantage for our incumbent
Republican governor, Don Sundquist. And it virtually
guarantees that the only effective candidate against Governor
Sundquist when he runs for re-election will be someone who is
so rich that he can spend his or her own money--which brings
us to the most important point.
Because of the limits, more of your choices are likely to
be rich candidates willing to spend their own money.
This brings us to the major problem with limits on campaign
giving and spending: The limits apply to some candidates but
not to others. This is because the U.S. Supreme Court has
said that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
prohibits Congress from preventing anyone from spending his
or her own money on our own campaigns. So the limits apply
only to people who aren't rich enough to spend money on their
own campaign.
This creates an absurd advantage for wealthy candidates and
a distorted contest for the voter. The first advantage is the
obvious: The wealthy candidate has more money to spend. For
example, Mr. Forbes spent $33 million of (mostly) his own
money; I spent, with matching funds, about $16 million of
other peoples' money.
There are two other less obvious advantages. The candidate
with his own money spends no time raising it. On the other
hand, the candidate raising it is careening from event to
event, repeating speeches, meeting nice people who can give
$1,000, wearing himself ragged, and using up 70 percent of
his time. By the time you reach the finals the week between
Iowa and New Hampshire, you are a candidate for a fitness
center, not the presidency.
Finally, there are the state-by-state spending limits,
which also help the rich. The federal government has decreed,
for example, that a campaign may not spend more than $1
million in Iowa and $618,000 in New Hampshire during the
presidential primaries. Mr. Forbes, unaffected by these
limits, spent $5 million in Iowa on television. The Alexander
campaign spent $930,000. The AP reported that on the third
week before the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Forbes bought 700
ads on one Boston television station (which covers southern
New Hampshire). That week, Senator Dole bought 200 ads on
that station. The Alexander campaign: none. Mr. Forbes must
have spent $5 million in Arizona, by my estimates. Local
newspapers said it was more than any advertiser had ever
spent on local television to introduce a new product. (It
must be pointed out that having your own money doesn't
automatically mean you win. Mr. Perot is not President. Mr.
Forbes came in fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. I
recall my race for governor in 1978 against a candidate who
must have spent $8 million. I spent $2 million, enough to
win, although I could never have raised $2 million if there
had been limits of $500 or $1,000 per contribution.)
What kind of contest is this, having different rules for
different contestants? This is like watching the Magic play
the Bulls with one team wearing handcuffs. It is certainly
not the game the voters paid to see. Think of it this way:
Say the fifth grade teacher organizes a contest for class
president with water pistols as the weapon of choice; then
some kid arrives with a garden hose. Either take away the new
kid's garden hose (Bill Bradley suggests a constitutional
amendment to limit what individuals can spend on their own
campaigns) or give the rest of the fifth graders the freedom
to raise and spend enough money to buy their own garden
hoses. And if the New Hampshire primary is most of the ball
game in presidential primaries, why should state-by-state
spending limits keep candidates from defending themselves,
even if they use up all their money?
Because of the limits, Washington has more to say about who
the nominee is and you have less.
Talking about Washington these days has gotten to be a
sticky business. The rest of the country is tired of
Washington, and Washington is tired of hearing about
Washington. The rest of the country is becoming more
offensive about its feelings, and Washington is becoming more
defensive. ``Cut their pay and send them home'' still makes
sense in Sioux City, but they call it nonsense here. One of
Washington's most senior journalists told me sadly last year
that ``This town has grown too big for its britches.'' I have
been coming and going from Washington off and on for 30 years
and I believe that is true as well; but to come from outside
Washington and say it, and to really believe it, is asking
for trouble.
I believe our President must lead us to expect less from
Washington and to ask more of ourselves. That is a message
less frequently heard in Washington and more difficult to
launch from outside Washington. For one thing, this is a
media-drenched society, and the message-launchers--the
media--are increasingly concentrated here. That will be more
true in 2000 and 2004 than it was in 1996. The party fund-
raising apparatus is here. The party leadership is here. The
think tanks, if you will excuse me, are here. To
receive maximum attention to my speech today, I am here.
There are all sorts of good people here in Washington, but
we of necessity, when we are here, talk mostly with each
other.
Reforming the Process
Limits on giving and spending make it less likely that a
candidate based outside Washington can succeed. Such
candidates, by their experience and skills, may be able to
help make Washington more like the rest of America, rather
than the rest of America more like Washington. I believe
Washington will always be a better place if it is constantly
refreshed by the strength of the country outside Washington.
The way we pick Presidents today makes that more difficult.
Limits are not all that is wrong.
The process should be deregulated. We should sunset the
existing regulations and start over. Fewer rules and full
disclosure should be the byword.
Spread out the primaries. Let Iowa and New Hampshire go
first, in February or March, and then arrange all the other
primaries on the second Tuesday of the next three months.
This would give winners a chance to capitalize on success,
voters a chance to digest new faces, and candidates a chance
to actually meet voters.
The candidates should be given the opportunity to speak on
television more often for themselves. My even mentioning this
runs the same risks Dennis Rodman would take if he suggested
some rule changes to a convention of NBA officials. So let me
begin with some praise. Some print reporters sat through New
Hampshire Lincoln Day dinners in the early stages of the
money primary, in 1994 and 1995. C-SPAN and CNN labored
valiantly and early. In January and February of 1996, the New
York Times began printing some long excerpts of the
candidates' speeches, and the networks began showing unedited
stump speeches. But most of the coverage came late, or was
about the horse race, or about candidates who were never
going to run. Seventy-nine minutes of network exposure in
seven-second sound bites for nine Republican candidates is
pathetically little.
There are dangers to early voting. In a growing number of
states, voters may vote a month or two before the election
day. According to the Edison exit poll of 1996 New Hampshire
primary voters, 40 percent of the voters made their minds up
during the last three days before the primary. Those who cast
their votes a month earlier were voting in quite a different
race.
Other Options For Reform
The first option is suggested by Senator Bill Bradley,
whose sporting background must make him especially allergic
to contests with one rule for some participants and another
rule for others. Senator Bradley would try to create a level
playing field by putting limits on everyone, in effect making
Mr. Forbes live by the same rules I do.
This takes care of Mr. Forbes and me. But the AFL-CIO will
still be able to run $35 million worth of TV ads attacking
particular Republican candidates. The National Association of
Wholesaler-Distributors will still
[[Page S10430]]
be able to run ads slamming President Clinton's product
liability veto. The National Restaurant Association will
advertise that President Clinton is wrong about the
minimum wage. The National Education Association will say
I am wrong about school choice. The national political
parties will raise tens of millions in ``soft money.'' The
President is the one person in America who is able to
advocate the best interests of the country as a whole. Why
should we limit the speech only of those who seek to speak
for the country as a whole?
Senator Bradley should leave the First Amendment alone. The
First Amendment is correct. It stands in the way of
preventing ill-advised efforts by the government to limit a
candidate's right to speak. And if there cannot be limits on
most of us, why should there be limits on any of us?
A second option is public financing which we now have with
the presidential general elections. But such taxpayer-funded
campaigns still leave Mr. Perot and the AFL-CIO and other
committees free to spend millions creating an unlevel playing
field. Also, public financing leaves the media with more
horsepower than the candidates themselves have. And I cannot
fathom how public financing would work in a primary
situation. Would the government have funded everyone who
showed up at the Republican debates this season? If so, such
funding would have produced countless more candidates. I am
opposed to public financing. It is incestuous. It is an
unnecessary use of taxpayers' money. It invites government
regulations. It creates an unlevel playing field by favoring
incumbents.
Finally, there are various proposals to require the media
to give away TV time. (Such proposals would never work in a
primary for the same reasons public financing could not work:
How would you choose to whom to give it?) The lack of an
opportunity for voters to consider the messages of
candidates--especially insurgent candidates--is at the heart
of the problem with our presidential process. But I am afraid
these well-meaning proposals will drown in their own
complexity and the law of unintended consequences will
somehow rear its head again. Isn't the best solution for the
media simply to cover the races and present the serious
candidates on network news and in the newspapers more often
on appropriate occasions, speaking for themselves?
Find the Good and Praise It
I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that I came away
from the campaign with a good feeling, not a bad feeling. My
friend Alex Haley used to say, ``Find the good and praise
it,'' and I can easily do that about this process, even with
its flaws. During the last year, I walked across New
Hampshire, meeting several hundred people a day, spent 80
days in Iowa in maybe 200 meetings that ranged from 20 to 300
people, and had at least 50 meetings in Florida with the
delegates to the Presidency III straw poll. During most of
these meetings I was little known and unencumbered by the
news media, so there was no disruption to the flow of the
session.
I remember wishing time after time that anybody who had any
sense of cynicism about our presidential selection process
could be with me, like a fly on the wall, because they could
not be cynical after hearing and seeing and feeling what I
saw. The groups with whom I met always listened carefully.
Most often, they wanted to talk about our jobs, our schools
and our neighborhoods, and our families. In meeting after
meeting, I came away certain that this is a nation hungry for
a vision contest, not one willing to tolerate a trivial
presidential election. I believe there is a great market in
the American electorate for a full-fledged discussion about
what kind of country we can have in the year 2000 and beyond.
As the song says, it is a long, long time from May 'til
September when the presidential race really begins. One way
to help fill this time usefully would be to review the way we
pick Presidents and make certain that next time, in the new
century, we have a process that attracts the largest number
of good candidates, that gives them an opportunity to say and
us to hear their messages, and gives as many of us as
possible a chance to cast a meaningful vote.
One lesson I learned when I ran for President is that step
one toward those objectives would be these four words: Off
with the limits.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to state my support for the
legislation Senators Klobuchar, Alexander, and I are introducing today
to create a regional Presidential primary system effective in 2012.
The goal of this legislation is to transform what has become a tired,
arbitrary, and exclusive presidential primary system that simply does
not give enough voters the opportunity to weigh the ideas of candidates
and choose the one they think would best represent their future.
Given the significance of choosing the most powerful officeholder in
the world, our Presidential selection process must be a fair and
deliberate one that tests the strength of the ideas and character of
all the candidates and exposes them to the maximum number of voters.
Instead, what we have now is a confusing process that, with each
passing Presidential election season, becomes more and more compressed,
forcing States to move their primaries up earlier in the calendar year
in order to give their citizens a chance to participate, and granting
disproportionate influence to the early States.
Where 50 States once scattered their primaries throughout the first
half of the election year--from January through June--this year, we
have a system in which 39 caucuses or primaries will be held in January
and February alone, up from 19 in 2004, with enough delegates at stake
potentially to decide the nominee. Almost half the States of the Union
will be excluded from that process.
There is another insidious effect of this increasingly condensed
schedule: The more compressed the primary schedule is the more reliant
candidates become on large campaign donations and the people who give
them. The fundraising primary this year has already eliminated
candidates who simply could not raise sufficient funds quickly enough
to be competitive in the first 2 months of the Presidential year.
This is no way for the world's greatest democracy to choose its
President.
Our legislation offers a commonsense alternative that would transform
the primary season into what it should be: a contest between candidates
who take their cases to the broadest possible slice of the electorate.
I was honored to cosponsor proposals to bring reason to the
Presidential primary system twice in the past--in 1996 and 1999--with
former Senator Slade Gorton. What we are introducing today is very
similar in that it calls for a regional, rotating primary system that
divides the 50 States into four regions that would take turns holding
primaries in the months of March, April, May, and June of the
Presidential election year.
Specifically, the bill would asign all States to one of four
regions--corresponding roughly to the Northeast, South, Midwest, and
Western regions of the country. A lottery would determine which region
goes first, and the regions would rotate in subsequent election years.
Each State within a region must hold its primary or caucus during the
period assigned to that region.
New Hampshire and Iowa would be permitted to continue holding the
first primary and caucus, respectively, before any of the regional
primaries would take place. I personally would have preferred to omit
this provision in the bill. If we are going to change to a regional
system, there should be no exceptions, and I am concerned that these
two States will continue to have a disproportionate impact on the
outcome of the nominating process. But Iowa and New Hampshire hold
iconic status in the Presidential primary system and so they remain the
first caucus and primary States in this bill.
The new system would take effect for the 2012 Presidential election.
By creating a series of regional primaries, we will make it more
likely that all areas of the country have input into the nominee
selection process, and that the candidates and their treasuries will
not be stretched so thin by primaries all over the country on the same
day. By spreading out the primaries over a 4-month period, we would
provide the electorate with a better opportunity to evaluate the
candidates over time. And with our bill, we hope that voters--not just
financial contributors--will have the lion's share of influence over
who the parties' nominees will be.
The guiding principle of our democracy is that every citizen has the
opportunity to choose his or her leaders. But the sad truth is this
principle no longer bears a resemblance to the reality of an
increasingly squashed and arbitrary primary system.
We need to change our presidential primary system to make it more
reasonable, more inclusive, and better structured so that it properly
reflects the significance it holds--not only every 4 years but as a
founding principle of our great Nation.
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