Ed Garvey: Now's the right time to scream for public financing of elections

Ed Garvey  —  11/04/2008 8:47 pm

I write before knowing the results of the 2008 election and that is somewhat liberating. My thoughts will not be shaped by election results. It's a little like writing about a Packer/Bear game without knowing who won. It is liberating because there is no chance that my analysis will influence anyone to vote for or against my choice, Barack Obama.

My conclusion is that the American people now know that we are, as a nation, in lots of trouble. Jobs are disappearing, wages are going down, 47 million people are without health care, bankers are acting like bankers, the national debt is scary, Social Security is in trouble, and we are fully engaged in the occupation of Iraq and phase two of the invasion of Afghanistan. (Obama, in response to Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. phone call TV spot and the "Are you ready to be commander in chief?" question, was pressured to commit to more troops, more money, more death and destruction in what could well be his Vietnam -- Afghanistan.) Not a pretty picture.

And our elections are little more than auctions. I got a call from a state senator last week and we talked about health care. I anticipated the request for money but it never came! Imagine my shock. A substantive discussion with a politician without a request for dough. That exception proves the rule. The rule? Never pass up an opportunity to raise money.

Tommy Thompson bears most of the blame for ruining Wisconsin's clean elections by refusing public financing of his gubernatorial campaigns, but his campaign contributions pale in comparison with the Obama tidal wave. (Without that huge pile of money, he would not have been in contention. Doesn't mean it was right or that any other candidate could do it.)

Private fundraising worked for Tommy and, as of Nov. 1, it was working for Barack. It worked for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce in the last two Supreme Court races, and they think it will work to defeat Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. It is the major factor in state legislative races; Jim Doyle is governor in large measure because of his fundraising; and incumbents have shoved the issue into the bottom drawer.

What do we do about it? I say raise hell, march on the Capitol, and engage in civil disobedience until the incumbents pass full public financing of campaigns starting with the courts. Can they really put us in jail because we want fair elections? Why speculate when we can find out?

We are in trouble because once again peace equals weakness. Do we continue the surge; do we bomb Iran; do we invade Pakistan; do we overthrow governments that disagree with us; do we employ Blackwater?

Obama would not have won the nomination if he had said in the first debate, "I will end the occupation of Iraq ASAP; I will halt the Afghanistan disaster ASAP; we will not bomb Iran; the Bush doctrine will go out the door with Bush and Cheney; we will develop a Peace College while downsizing the War College; and a Cabinet-level Department of Alternative Dispute Resolution will be created." Hillary would have given him a karate chop and that would have been that.

We don't elect presidents who think rationally about war even though our nation is staggering under the Iraq debt and we are poised to jump with both feet into Afghanistan. We will spend a trillion dollars on Iraq before it is over and even then 4.6 million Iraqi people will remain homeless.

Where is the hope? I'll tell you. It is the fact that an African-American won the nomination of the Democratic Party. Seems like yesterday that Fannie Lou Hamer was trying to get the Democrats to seat an integrated delegation from Mississippi.

This, as Barack said, "is our moment." This is Nelson Mandela released from prison; this is the dream of Martin Luther King; this is the healing agent we have needed for 200 years. This is civil rights activists singing "We Shall Overcome" and overcoming. It is the moment that can eliminate the racial divide.

And there is something else. McCarthyism is dying if not dead. Calling Obama a terrorist, a socialist and a Marxist as well as a scary Muslim didn't work. Our nation has grown up. Elections will never be the same, Gov. Sarah Palin notwithstanding.

So I hope Obama won but it doesn't matter in some ways. He opened the door, and our nation will never be the same.

Ed Garvey is a Madison lawyer, political activist and the editor of the fightingbob.com Web site.

Ed Garvey  —  11/04/2008 8:47 pm