Political Reform

I keep forgetting that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has for some reason been allowed to re-invent himself as a fake expert on the national security issues of the contemporary Middle East. Elsewhere in that issue of Democracy, however, you'll find Mark Schmitt's smart take on the failures of the 1990s-vintage campaign finance reform movement and charting a course for more fruitful action in the future.

I think what I agree with most is the section in page three which points out the limits of "corruption and the appearance of corruption" as the rationale for reform. Those are important values, of course. But one can't talk seriously about election rules without also considering values like trying to preserve some measure of political equality. And perhaps most important of all, trying to ensure that competitive elections even happen in the first place. The best cure for corruption (or, indeed, the appearance of corruption) is almost certainly for elected officials to regularly face vigorous challengers. That means the emphasis has to less be on "getting the money out of politics" than on getting at least some political money into the hands of ordinary people.

Comments

I have something of a technology utopian thought on how to proceed with regard to money politics.

The first point is that the cost is at least partially driven by expensive television advertising. Technology is going to provide within the decade much more options in how content is delivered as well as newer business models. As an addition to a la carte cable - an obviously good idea, imo - we could also add in a la carte financing (subscription or ad-based) as well as allowing content consumers to filter out particular or types of ads.
I am guessing that if consumers were given the option of filtering out political ads, that it would be a popular choice, thus severely reducing a major cost to campaigns. I doubt that the information lost would be serious, but if it were it could be replaced by other more valuable communication forums.

Posted by theCoach | March 13, 2007 11:23 AM

Oh God, him again. I remember writing an essay about his book (Hitler's Willing Executioners) and wondering how, exactly, Germans who according to his thesis were irrevocably infected by eliminationist antisemitism stopped being so on the boat to the US. Was it when they got aboard in Hamburg? When they got off at Ellis Island? Or halfway across?

Also, what the fuck does "eliminationist" mean anyway? Surely the only difference between a pogrom (which, per Goldhagen, was antisemitic but not eliminationist) and Auschwitz is the availability of railcars? And, of course, other forms of state power, such as lists, guns, gas etc. But the point remains - if you are willing to physically lynch the Jews in your hometown, surely you must be willing to connive passively at the elimination of all the Jews in your country?

But he needs "eliminationism" as a special subset of anti-semitism so as to filter off all the non-German anti-semites and make his hypothesis work. It ends up being a book you can boil down into the following sentence: America's great, as are those countries it's currently fashionable to like. Everywhere else sucks.

Gah. The man's a halfwit. Rather than reading HWE, I recommend instead Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men.

And I suspect his views on Middle Eastern politics will be capable of shorterisation as follows: Israel is right, because everyone except for Americans is an eliminationist anti-semite, at least if you don't count the brown people.

Posted by Alex | March 14, 2007 7:03 AM