Nearly all discussion of campaign reform has been limited to ideas for reducing the influence of money in elections. Better reporting requirements, especially of what is called “dark money,” are worth pursuing, but the Supreme Court has left little room for restricting the amount of money spent on elections. The court allowed restrictions on what a candidate can raise from a single source but has held that there can be no limit on independent expenditures not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. The bizarre result is that candidates are at a disadvantage in defining their own messages compared to interlopers who can spend whatever they please.
I hope that the Supreme Court will overrule its current jurisprudence on the financing of elections, but I am not optimistic that this will happen in the foreseeable future. So, I think it would be more fruitful for reform-minded citizens to redirect their attention from the financing of elections to a more promising, and I think more important, subject: how political campaigns are conducted.
Whatever their cost, modern campaigns are miserable affairs, so vapid that they deprive voters of the ability to make informed decisions about the nation’s future. They are almost entirely lacking in substance, and consist of short bursts of messaging in 30-second commercials, tweets and telemarketing calls. It is impossible to present serious policy ideas, for example about the economy or health care, in short bursts. What can be done effectively in very few words are personal attacks on the character and motives of opponents. Such attacks constitute the essence of modern campaigns.
What are called “debates” are supposed to be forums for candidates to present contrasting opinions on important subjects. However, most debates share the same characteristics as campaign advertising: They consist of brief fragments of time, typically two minutes or so, to answer whatever the questioner asks. Some questions have seemed designed more to showcase the panelist’s cleverness than to plumb the candidates’ positions. One panelist asked whether candidates prefer Coke or Pepsi.
Any politician can dance around any subject for two minutes, and all candidates are happy to rely on preplanned sound bites: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” What candidates want to avoid is answering hard questions where answers will lose votes.
But it is just such hard questions that should be answered if voters are to make informed decisions.
The key to improving the content of campaigns is to provide longer periods of time for candidates to address important issues. These extended time periods would supplement, not substitute for the current short burst campaigning. There is no constitutional way to abolish tweets and 30-second commercials. But longer periods would give voters better understanding of the issues. Here are three ideas for reforming the content of campaigns.
1. Last January, Washington University invited Missouri likely Senate nominees Claire McCaskill and Josh Hawley to appear on campus for one-hour, back-to-back interviews in which the two candidates would respond to substantially the same questions. Jim Lehrer, formerly of “The PBS NewsHour,” agreed to be the questioner. In a non-combative setting, each candidate in turn would address subjects important to the country. As far as I know, the invitation still stands.
2. For an hour and a half, candidates could share the same stage, alternating 15-minute segments where they could address subjects of their choice. The only role of the moderator would be to act as timekeeper. This format would permit the candidates to select their own issues, and the allotted time periods would approximate the sort of debate typical in the Senate.
3. In the weeks immediately before elections, radio and TV stations could offer candidates time blocs of 10-15 minutes to address voters.
These are three ideas with the common objective of moving campaigns beyond 30-second hit jobs toward more extended focus on substantive issues. No doubt others will have better ideas for serving the same objective. Bar associations, in particular, may be an excellent source for developing better formats for campaigns, because court rules exist to focus controversies on relevant points.
Would that campaign finance reform could happen. I don’t think that Supreme Court decisions make that possible. What is possible, and would greatly improve the quality of campaigns, would be to create formats where candidates would receive blocs of time to address important issues. That is a result that is possible to achieve and an objective that is worth pursuing.
John Danforth was a Republican U.S. senator from Missouri from 1976 to 1995.