[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]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      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.




                          ____________________