Money, Television, and Politics

THE OPEN MIND
Host: Richard D. Heffner
Guests: Jack Valenti and Donald Rumsfeld
Title: “Money, Television and Politics”
VTR: 11/19/88

I’m Richard Heffner, your host on The Open Mind. And I have two guests with me today, each of whom has been importantly close to a President of the United States. Former Republican Congressman Donald Rumsfeld was Gerry Ford’s White House Chief of Staff after serving as United States’ Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, later becoming this nation’s youngest Secretary of Defense in the Ford Administration.

Before my colleague Jack Valenti became so extraordinarily well-known as President of the Motion Picture Association of America, he was Lyndon Johnson’s intimately close White House Aide, serving his fellow Texas Democrat with great skill and unabashed loyalty.

Both men have been my guests on The Open Mind before, twice together in discussing a single six-year term for President. Indeed, when he and Jack Valenti were here nearly two years ago, Don Rumsfeld was himself being mentioned as the GOP’s candidate for the Presidency in 1988. Now his official biography notes that he withdrew from that race after concluding that it would be impossible to pursue it without incurring a campaign debt in excess of 4 million dollars, “which he found unacceptable”. The actual costs of the 1988 Presidential campaign, with its overwhelming emphasis on television, indicate, of course what small potatoes that sum would have been.

And I should note, too, that even twenty years ago, when I served as Director of the 20th Century Fund’s 1968 commission on campaign costs in the electronic age, chaired by Newton Minnow…even then television had already become the key in America. For some of us it was important then to do something; it is imperative now. For now raising the huge sums needed to pay for political broadcasting affects our candidates for office, and how the newer broadcast formats themselves impact upon our political life…these are issues many Americans consider far too serious simply to leave to the tender mercies of those who raise that money or create those political broadcasts themselves.

But, maybe not. It’s a big country. Big bucks for anything aren’t really out of line here in America. One claim a while ago, for gosh sakes, was that the amount spent on all our Federal elections in a two year period was only about what we Americans spent on candy every three weeks.

Still, if they see this matter of money and politics in the electronic age as a problem, too, let me ask my guests what they would do about it. Gentlemen…Don…what would you do about it if anything, maybe you think it’s all fine?

Rumsfeld: Well I don’t think it’s all fine but I don’t think the problem’s the amount of money. I think that is addressing really the wrong issue and I speak from some experience. The way I would phrase it is “in a democratic system how can we avoid a situation where people are precluded from participating, from running”? Now let me give you an example, let’s say you’re an astronaut and you’re famous or a baseball player, you’ve got an enormous advantage if you’re running for office. Let’s say you’re a television commentator like Pat Roberts or any number of others who now serve in Congress. Let’s say you’re an incumbent, and the tax payers are giving you a million and a half to two million dollars a year for staff and salary and travel and television and radio and franking privileges so that you can perpetuate yourself in office. You’ve got an enormous advantage. Let’s say you’re a multi-millionaire and you can spend a lot yourself. That’s an advantage. So there are lots of different ways that a person can have an advantage. The problem is the current rules put a limit on contributions of 1,000 dollars per person for a Federal election per candidate. That means that if a person’s advantage is that they…they’re not an astronaut, they’re not an incumbent, they’re not wealthy but they could get people to give them more than a thousand dollars. They’re not playing on a level playing field. They are hurt, they’re damaged by reforming efforts of do-gooders around the country passing legislation trying to lower the costs of elections. It hasn’t lowered the cost of elections, it’s raised the cost of elections.

Heffner: Jack?

Valenti: I couldn’t disagree more with Don, for whom I have great affection and respect. I think money is the cancer in the belly of American politics. It’s going to destroy this country and some of its great commandments. I think it’s a hand grenade whose pin has been pulled. Anybody who’s a professional, as Don is, knows what money means and the business of the thousand dollar contribution – it’s a fake. There’s soft money, there are all sorts of ways to get money…under the current rules you realize you can give unlimited contributions in soft money. It isn’t even required to be disclosed. No one knows when this election is over how much money will have actually been donated to the candidates, to the parties because there is no requirement for disclosure. Number two, the Political Action Committees of this country wield enormous power and if I were a Congressman and Senator today, I think I would feel, as many of them do, that time is out of joint, that the system is rotten to the core. What would I do about it? I would try to attack it as you have to attack the drug problem and that is you can never stop the drugs coming into this country. The only way you’re going to beat the drug problem is to stop the demand and therefore I think there are some simple things that can be done that I would do if I were the steward of all the Americas. I would limit the amount of money you could spend on a campaign. I would limit the amount of money you could spend on television and I would put big, tough, hard, sharp teeth in that. The Federal election commission today is not a paper tiger, it’s a paper Chihuahua. So, that’s some of the things I would do to do it but I think this is soiling the American ethic and unless you do something about it as Senator Boren, David Boren has been very courageous in this, eh and Senator Byrd, Senator Cranston and others have bills before the Congress. Senator Warren Rudman, a Republican, Senator Dan Inoye, a Democrat, have a bill, kind of interesting, they want to make it a law that if you have a political ad, you must have the person who is running for office on that ad or whoever you have speaking has to be identified as to who you are. One final thing, you know there’s…two to four years ago in Georgia, I was down there a couple of times during the election, the fellow who ran for County Commissioner or County whatever, who never once appeared in public, never once appeared on a television ad, but spent a lot of money on television with voiceover and graphics, won the election.

Rumsfeld: The fact of the matter is, while Jack is well motivated, he’s flat wrong. What would happen would be that the person who’d been a television commentator, or an astronaut, or an incumbent could get reelected but, by limited the amount they could spend, just plain Joe who was running never could elected. He couldn’t get elected because he wouldn’t have enough money to offset the enormous advantages that the others have. Let me tell you what I would do about it. I would do something…and the goal’s the same…

Valenti: Before you go on, Don…wait before…let me just inject. Then how do you explain that 98.5 percent of all House incumbents win every year?

Rumsfeld: That’s what I’m getting to, I’ll tell you exactly why the 98.5 percent get reelected, because there are three things that conspire to do it. First is gerrymandering which protects incumbents, second is the PACs are giving about 85 percent to curry favor and I’d like to see Pas abolished. I’d like to see a rule that you could only accept political contributions from individuals, not through some cutout of an organization but only from individuals…let me go on, let me go on…

Heffner: Limited contributions?

Rumsfeld: No. contributions only from individuals. No PACs, I’d like to see PACs done. All they’re doing is trying to curry favor with the people in office and skewing their money to try and perpetuate those people in office and it’s a bad system. The third thing that is causing it is that incumbent Congressmen today have about two million dollars of tax payer’s money and…with the franking privilege…and if you take the perquisites of the office – tax payers money of two million, money from PACs, and the gerrymandering – it is practically impossible to beat an incumbent and challengers know it. So, what do challengers do? They don’t run. The quality of the challenges has gone down to the point where today one out of every six of the 435 House races is unopposed. In Florida half were unopposed, in Texas half were unopposed – the person didn’t even have an opponent – it’s by default. You cannot beat an incumbent Congressman today unless the person’s in jail.

Heffner: You two don’t seem to disagree on your descriptions of what the problem is, but you sure as the devil seem to disagree on what you would do.

Rumsfeld: I would favor full disclosure of all contributions.

Valenti: I don’t want to make this a rich man’s country…

Rumsfeld: I don’t either.

Valenti: And I think if you allow unlimited contributions that’s exactly what you will do. There are people in this country who can give several millions of dollars to a candidate and if a few of them band together, they can elect anybody.

Rumsfeld: Well let me explain something about that, though. Basically what you are saying is anti-democratic in the sense…if you have full disclosure and if people know whose giving the money let the people make a decision about that. Do you think it’s better for the Congressman, the incumbent to have two million dollars of tax payers’ money that he can use against a challenger who doesn’t have that two million or what if he has to disclose where he gets the two million dollars? I think that way the people could make a judgment.

Valenti: Don, Don, you and I are professionals. I know that I can give my money toward the late weeks in the campaign…let the man borrow some money and keep going. I’ll give you my money toward the last week of the campaign and when I disclose the election’s over. What am I going to do, take the Senatorial job away from the man who won? Come on, we know that’s not the way to do that. If you…

Rumsfeld: You don’t believe in disclosure?

Valenti: Yes, I believe in disclosure but many disclosures aren’t made until after an election. We just are seeing now some of the voluntary disclosures of those people who gave a hundred thousand dollars or more in soft money – voluntary. The election’s over. Don, it’s all gone. So what good does full disclosure do? I’m saying to you that the way I believe this ought to be done is you ought to limit the contributions that an individual can give. You ought to say that no one…

Rumsfeld: It is limited to a thousand dollars.

Valenti: That’s right, continue it for a thousand dollars. You cannot give to any candidate that doesn’t live in your state.

Rumsfeld: I’ll agree with that.

Valenti: Number two, PACs ought to be abolished, if not abolished let them spend money on get-out-the-vote or anything like that but don’t’ have PACs give money to candidates. But the only way then, that you can keep the playing field equal and level is to limit the amount of money that you can spend in an election – ten cents, fifteen cents a vote, ten cents a vote, whatever it is and make it strong. And then I think you will go back to the way campaigns…

Rumsfeld: You know there’s a constitutional prohibition against that?

Valenti: Oh I know, the (inaudible) case says that you…an individual can give all the money he wants. But Congress could pass a law, in my judgment, and then it’d go to the Supreme Court and see whether they want to declare that unconstitutional as an intrusion on the First Amendment. I think that we could do it. If you don’t pass that law and knock off the (inaudible)D case then, of course, any a millionaire can spend all his money if he chooses to and a fellow whose machinist, or a painter, or a carpenter who wants to get into politics is exiled from the marketplace because he can’t get the money.

Heffner: it’s interesting, Jack talks about soft money and just before the election, the day before, the New York Times did an editorial called “The Campaign Sewer Overflows” talked about money commonly called soft money, said the better term is “sewer money” said “thus as the campaign ends”, and as Jack suggests we don’t know the dimensions of the dollars involved, “as the campaign ends it’s estimated that each candidate has raised an astounding 50 million dollars in sewer money” the soft money…

Rumsfeld: This is the Presidential candidates?

Heffner: The two presidential candidates. “Five times more than the total for both candidates just four years ago” in 1984.

Rumsfeld: It’s terrible.

Valenti: Herbert Alexander who is probably the best known expert on campaign funding estimated that four years ago total campaign costs, from primaries through the election, about 325 million dollars. He estimates this year it’ll probably be a half a million dollars. We do know…I think in 1974 if you took the amount of money spent in the five most expensive Senatorial campaigns in the country, that’d be 67 cents per vote. In 1986 it was $7.74 per vote. If you took how much was spent on television in 1974 – 12 cents per vote on television – in 1986 it was $3.24 per vote on television. We all know that if you’re running a campaign and you’re advising about 60% of all your campaign expenditures will go for television. Everything else – campaign workers, buttons, pamphlets, newspapers, direct mail is the other 40%. Television, television is the vitamins, the bone, the blood and the sinew of campaigning today and the money for that is insatiable, the money required for television. And that’s why I say unless you stem that tide, unless you put a finger in that dike, you’re going to e buried when the dam bursts.

Rumsfeld: Let me see if I can get you to understand the problem of, the absence of a level playing field. An incumbent has two million dollars of tax payer’s money to perpetuate himself in office. A challenger can’t offset that if you put a limit on the amount of money he can receive at a thousand dollars per person. There’s no way he can go out and collect enough money to offset that for a Congressional seat, it’s impossible.

Heffner: Don, Don, let me ask Jack this question. There’s a very specific point; it’s certainly demonstrated by the fact that we have almost a permanent congress, now. How would you deal with this question of those incredible sums of money, in kind, that those in office already have if you’re going to limit the opportunity for the non-incumbent?

Valenti: Because I think all politics is local except for the Presidential election, that’s different. When you run for Congress and when you run for the Senate it’s like Tip O’Neill said, that’s local politics. And if you do your job, if you do your case work, if you answer your letters, if you get the pensions for the people who call in for their grandfathers, if you really serve the public and you don’t steal or cheat or rape the Minister’s daughter on the Court House steps at high noon, your chances are the people will send you back because for over two years or six years your name’s been in the paper, you’ve been toe very bar mitzvah and boy scout meeting and the wedding receptions and funerals and people get to know you, and that’s why it’s hard to beat a Congressman or Senator who does a good job. Id o agree with Don with the franking privilege, you can send a lot of things home and every day you get something in the mail. There’s no way to deal with that because if you’re a Congressman you’ve got to communicate with your people. But what I’m saying to you is this…

Rumsfeld: Bu jack that’s the argument that Congressmen give. You know that the Congressmen sent out 800 million pieces of mail last year. They sent out twelve thousand pieces of mail for every one they received. Is that communicating? That’s a deluge. It’s a tidal wave.

Valenti: I’m not going to argue that point because id o agree, I think it is a massive campaign asset. But all I’m saying to you is the minute that you unlock the gate and allow total contributions, unlimited…

Rumsfeld: But we’ve had that for most of the history of this country, what do you mean…

Valenti: …before you had television. In the old days when I was a boy growing up in Texas we didn’t watch television. I went to Lunar park and watched the people come to the rally. There’d be thousands of people at a rally and you could rise up an unknown and speak man to man to those people and convince them and persuade them with passion and authority and conviction…

Rumsfeld: Those days are gone, it’s all spin control artists…

Valenti: That’s right, that’s true but then…

Rumsfeld: And handlers and media advisers…

Heffner: Then that’s the problem, suppose you address yourself to that problem, Don?

Rumsfeld: Maybe you want to put a twelve year limit on service in the Congress? I don’t know…

Heffner: Well listen last time we were here together, last two times we were here together, Jack was pushing a six year limit on President. You were saying “oh no, no dice”…

Rumsfeld: I know, I know and I was right (Laughter)

Heffner: But now are you serious about that?

Valenti: You’ve found the truth, you know the old west Texas saying is that “dear lord let me seek the truth but spare me the company of those who have found it”.

Rumsfeld: (Laughter) that’s right…exactly.

Heffner: Look, both of you want a level playing field. You seem to be saying along with Charles Murray that we’re going to “lose ground” if the do-gooders interfere…

Rumsfeld: That’s right.

Heffner: But what we have now is a situation that is…

Rumsfeld: It’s not good now and I would like…

Heffner: It’s lousy.

Rumsfeld: It’s terrible and I’m inclined to think we probably ought to have PACs not contribute to candidates and I think jack said he agreed with that. I’m inclined to think that there are probably some other things we can do, but the one thing you shouldn’t do is to put a thousand dollar limit on contributions because that makes the playing field uneven. It prevents a person from participating in that process against an incumbent, against a TV commentator or against a star athlete…

Heffner: But look, both of you agree that the key element here is television and the suggestion has been frequently made that there be a limit placed on what can be done with that medium.

Valenti: Or, or you do what they do in Great Britain, which is also a democracy and does well with short and inexpensive campaigns, you tell every licensee of a government television station – and every television station in America qualifies for that description – and you say, “you’re going to give to this campaign as part of the fact that you’ve gotten a license for nothing. You will give blank minutes or hours during the campaign so that the fellow who doesn’t have any money can go, like a pit bull, face to face with his opponent on a debate”. Now that is another way, I think, by holding the fort…have stern perimeters on how much can be spent on television and then order television stations as part of their purchase of that license, as part of the license fee, that they would give time to candidates for office.

Heffner: Don, you’re a free enterprise man, I can see you’re unhappy with that.

Rumsfeld: Yes, I worry when people start regulating and controlling everything. I think in the last analysis what we believe in in this country is freedom and disclosure, we want people to know what’s going on. And I think that to the extent that we can avoid getting into a system of a great deal of regulation and management of this process…that’s the reason I’m not in favor of federal funding of campaigns, I’m uncomfortable about it, but disclosure I believe in…

Heffner: Right now we do have federal funding…

Rumsfeld: As Jack says for a part of it…

Valenti: That’s right…

Rumsfeld: A big part, the soft money was…

Valenti: 46 million dollars each candidate got this year for federal funds in the program.

Rumsfeld: 26 million?

Valenti: 46 million.

Heffner: 46. Now suppose Don along with that went the requirement that if you accept that money, not only can’t you accept other above the board money, hard money, but that you participate in television debates, if you will, the kind of exchange that you two are having right here. That there is a price that you pay for your 46 or 56 or soon 106 million bucks.

Rumsfeld: That’s constitutional, in other words if you say I want to accept on that basis, that’s a contract. “I’ll take the federal funding, in exchange I’ll agree to do the things you’re requiring”, that’s not unconstitutional.

Heffner: Jack?

Valenti: To me every democracy has to have some government authority and the idea of a totally free market is an illusion. We both know that. That’s what government’s instituted for. Alexander Hamilton, who was no democrat, said that if men would voluntarily constrain themselves you wouldn’t need a government. So I don’t see anything that is disorderly or does injustice to freedom to say we’re going to try to make it possible for every man and woman in America to run for office without having wealthy people having unfair advantage over them in getting across their message. And we’re going to ask those people who got a free license from the government to run a television station to give some of that time back once every two years so that the people can come on who want to offer themselves to the public and let them bespeak whatever it is they choose to offer.

Heffner: Well, if one were interested in not putting the screws to the broadcasters, too, you could say that part of the money that the public funding goes to buy that time the real question is how the time is used. How the money i8s used for the time that’s bought. And what we’ve had is a campaign of political commercials rather than political exchanges.

Valenti: I must say I would…

Rumsfeld: This last Presidential campaign was unfortunate. If you think about it…I’ve been involved in every Presidential campaign since I started in politics in 1958 when I got out of the Navy, that’s a long time. This one, more than any other I’ve ever seen, people weren’t a part of it. It was really the media, it was handlers, it was paid employees…

Valenti: And why was it, and why was it? Sure I agree with you.

Rumsfeld: And the absence of the excitement of a Presidential campaign, it wasn’t there. It was strictly media. Now, was it well done by the two of them? Sure. Did they do that which Presidential elections have now evolved into professionally? Yes. But is it ago do sign? No, I think it i9s a worrisome thing…

Valenti: I wouldn’t object if after every television ad it said “this ad was written and conceived by Roger Ailes or whoever…

Rumsfeld: (Laughter) let’s not go crazy on this.

Heffner: Don, you’ve rejected the idea of a single six-year term and I remember the last time you did it was when your party was in power, and the time before that when you did it your party was in power. Your party is in power now…

Valenti: I was about 8 years old when the Democrats were in power.

Rumsfeld: (Laughter) I would have been smart enough, I think, to pose it when they tried to do it as an anti-Roosevelt thing.

Heffner: But you’re concerned about the spin artists. You’re concerned about what has been done with television…

Rumsfeld: I am, I am.

Heffner: Then what would you do now that we have reelected the Republicans?

Rumsfeld: It doesn’t matter. Republican or Democrat in this issue…

Heffner: OK.

Rumsfeld: The fact of the matter is what we have to hope for and what I believe in is that the American people are ultimately wise, that they ultimately are going to make the right judgments. And at some point, to the extent that television so dominates our lives, they’ll start turning it off or they’ll change the channel or they’ll be discriminating or they’ll get an inner regulator that’ll enable hem to set aside things that aren’t true or that are twisted or disproportionate.

Heffner: Would you be willing to have as a price for that federal funding, which I know you don’t agree with but there it is, the format control rather than the spring control?

Rumsfeld: No, I’m against federal funding and I’m against excessive regulation by the federal government would think in the last analysis we have to have confidence in the people, and I think that what’s the basic problem we face today is that there is an uneven playing field because of the power of notoriety whether it’s from incumbency or a TV commentator or an athlete or something else. That gives them a tremendous edge and a challenger to that needs money and if he’s capable of…this is my situation. If I’m capable of going out and talking people into giving me 2000 dollars a person instead of a thousand a person I think that ought to be my advantage against the people whose advantage are incumbency or something else. And I think it’s totally unrealistic to have a thousand dollar limitation. I know for a fact it is and I know it’s creating an uneven playing field.

Valenti: I trust audiences and I trust voters and I have implicit faith they’ll do the right thing if the communications to them are not tilted. I believe in competition in the marketplace and in the political arena. And I’m saying to you what we ought to do is to make sure competition is sturdy and alive and robust. And the only way you’re going to have that is to make sure that the man with the most money is not going to have an edge and therefore you ought to control the one element of politics which has this unbelievable appetite for funds and that is television, either by public funding or time given by the stations.

Heffner: Jack Valenti, Don Rumsfeld, I think you both demonstrate how important and beneficial it would be if we could have this kind of exchange between people who feel as strongly as you both do. Thank you for joining me today. And thanks too, to you in the audience. I hope that you’ll join us again next time. And if you care to share your thoughts about today’s program, today’s guests, today’s theme, please write The Open Mind, PO Box 7977, FDR Station, New York, NY 10150. For transcripts send $2.00 in check or money order. Meanwhile, as an old friend used to say, “Good night and good luck.”

Continuing production of this series has generously been made possible by grants from: The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation; the M. Weiner Foundation of New Jersey; the Mediators and Richard and Gloria Manney; the Richard Lounsbery Foundation; Mr. Lawrence A. Wein; and the New York Times Company Foundation.