What Price Free Speech?

The Obama administration is attempting to improve the public’s access to information about political contributions, to make full-disclosure a requirement. I don’t object to the notion, but it will both fail and serve to create another issue that distracts from the more salient issues that are critical to the country. The attempt will fail because it is a partial measure at best, it will create a reactionary First Amendment tsunami that will have more lawsuits then Iowa has corn kernels, and here is the real problem: it is the wrong way to solve the problem. I don’t think the Supreme Court will be favorably disposed either since I am pretty sure that as illogical as they can be at time, they will be desperate to protect the corporations from the interference of anyone as irrelevant as the Government.

Now I know that the Government is multi-faceted and that this effort could be made without significantly or meaningfully impairing anything else that the Government is doing. However, once the fire-fight starts, this issue will occupy more time than is appropriate or necessary for the President and his councilors. The benefit that the public would receive from preventing Congress from acting on other things is going to be off-set by the long-term effects of distracting the administration on critical matters challenging the nation today. The public interest that is served here is important, and finding a way to help insure that the public knows who and what are behind political ads would only help broaden the public debate and would be desirable. The approach that the administration is taking is just not the right one. Trying to use a governmental policy is only a partial solution and will drive the political contribution process to find the other cracks for the financial funds to run through.

If we are to serve the public and the republic then we should deal with political contributions in a manner that will be worthy of the nation and freedoms that were declared by some staunch advocates of a democracy. One of our political short-comings is that we think the public is generally stupid. It’s not that the public is stupid; it’s that they are grossly under informed about the issues. The major culprits behind maintaining the informational deficiency are the political parties. I think they go by the names: Republicans and Democrats.

To correct the problem, the solution requires that you address the rewards and incentives that the Democrats and Republicans get from undisclosed political contributions; and equally, if not more important, the contributions to the non-candidate and “issues” political ads that corrupt our media. If the American people truly want to have awareness and knowledge about who is supporting their contending politicians when they are deciding whom to vote for, then the solution needs to come from the voters’ support of full-disclosure. If the public really doesn’t care, then trying to force disclosure is an exercise in futility. If you believe in full-disclosure then make it a key political act that any politician who even wants to think about running for office is terrified of not participating in.

The solution only requires one of the politicians running for an office to engage in full-disclosure. And part of every campaign speech, every interview, every answer to any question will include the candidates’ dedication to full-disclosure and the utter failure of their opponent to provide the public with the identity of their contributors. After all, the politician is not required to accept contributions on the basis of anonymity. In accepting such funds, they do so only because they are willing to put the interests of one party over that of the public’s. There is no argument that it infringes upon some one’s freedom of speech, if they want to support the politician they can. If they want to do so anonymously, they can but the politician has to decide that it’s in their best interest.

As for the non-candidate and ‘issues’ ads political contributions, there are a number of ways to help provide the public with the opportunity of knowing and understanding the interests of the contributing sources. But if the public doesn’t want the candidates to operate under a full-disclosure process, then I can’t believe that the corruptive influences of the other ads matters. If you are willing to sell out your vote to a politician that won’t be honest and up-front with you, how can you expect special interest groups to want you to know what their objectives might be.