Bob Lenhard, former Chair of the FEC, published an op-ed this last weekend on the travails of the public financing system, and, and like other supporters of a strengthened system, he argues that the answer lies in higher spending limits for participating candidates.  Spending has outraced the legal allowances: the bargain—public dollars exchanged for spending limits—is no longer an attractive one for candidates who know they will have to spend more and can fund the difference.  

     But then Lenhard writes this:

Taxpayer participation has fallen steadily, from 28 percent in 1981 to approximately 10 percent over the past several years. Whether this is because of ideological opposition to publicly financed elections, ignorance of what checking the box will do or a mistaken belief that participation will raise their tax bill, nine out of every 10 taxpayers decide not to send any of their tax dollars into this program.

     Public funding as public policy faces this hard truth:  weak public support.  Lenhard notes possible reasons for this feeble commitment.  There may be another, one not on his list:  that taxpayers, even if fully informed, are just not motivated to check off the dollar.  They simply don’t care enough about the program, or they are not convinced that it will function as advertised.

     The “corruption” obsession at the center of campaign finance argument may have contributed to the problem.  If politicians are bad and politics is foul, with no real hope in sight, then it is hard to see why any right-thinking taxpayer will check the box and part with the bucks.  Elites are very much taken with the anti-politics theme:  for voters, it is simply depressing, and fundraising appeals fall flat on a depressed audience.  And the check-off is a fundraising appeal.

     A different approach might work better if it is more affirmative in character:  if the voters are given a compelling reason why those handful of dollars asked of them will enrich our politics.  Taxpayers may find it unpersuasive—to the point of being distasteful—to be told that with a few dollars apiece, we can keep politicians’ hands off the lucre danged before them by interests.  They probably don’t believe the pitch.  But they might respond more to a message of participation, to a picture drawn of a politics in which theirs is the leading part.

     This year, citizens have responded through the web with vast sums to support the Presidential campaigns of their choice.  This commitment could be harnessed to the benefit of the public funding system, but only if the argument is changed and taxpayers can be given more than just “reasons,” particularly reasons that they have heard so numbingly often, all about the hazards of money-in-politics, and that many now fully discount.  What they need is more than a reason:  they need a cause, one they can believe in. 

Bob Bauer