OU President David Boren's short, little book, A Letter to America, is a plea to return to the days when Democrats dominated the Congress, and Republicans knew their place. Boren does not present it in those explicit terms, but the intent is clear.
The "moderate" Senator Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican, is held up by Boren as a model member of Congress. Boren recalled Baker telling him that it is the moderates who really determine the outcome of the contest, a situation that Boren laments as no longer the case. That was in the late 70's, right before the Reagan Revolution of 1980 that swept 18 liberal Democrat senators out of power, and shifted the Congress to the Right. In the pre-Reagan Era, the Republicans, like Baker, held little power except to go along with the heavy Democrat majorities.
The crux of the problem, as David Boren sees it, is too much of financial resources for members of Congress come from "well-financed special-interest groups that may have little connection to those home constituencies." While Senator Tom Coburn votes much more conservatively than Boren ever did, Coburn basically takes the same restrictive view that does Boren in this area: They want to limit campaign contributions to the congressman's home state or district.
This would be fine if that U.S. House member or U.S. Senator from another state did not affect me with his vote. But, Ted Kennedy does affect me with his vote, and I have every right to make a financial contribution to Kennedy's opponent. Strangely, Coburn favors term limits for members of Congress, but the only logical reason to favor term limits, to me, is because other states' members of Congress affect me just as much as my own representative or senator. If Ted Kennedy only affected the unfortunate citizens of Massachusetts, then they could vote him in forever (and they probably will), for all I care.
In his chapter titled Campaign Corruption, Boren wrote, "Many people living today were influenced by President Kennedy to enter politics because it was seen as a way to make a difference." It is interesting that Boren chose Kennedy to make a point in a chapter about the supposed sinister influence of money in a political campaign. The Kennedy Family money simply buried the out-spent Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Democrat primary in West Virginia.
Boren favorably cites laws in some European nations that do not allow spending on media advertising, signs, or even direct mail before a certain period. While Boren does not call it this, I will call it what it is: an abridgement of free speech, the type of speech the Founding Fathers were intending to protect in the First Amendment. Boren wrote that the government owns the airwaves, so the government could simply force the television networks to give "free" air time to political candidates. This "free" air time would be allotted in longer blocks of time, to stop the thirty-second "attack" spot, now common in political campaigns.
Too much money is spent on politics, Boren complains. Considering how important political campaigns are, one might dispute Boren's judgment that "too much" money is spent in campaigns. After all, you only see campaign signs, and campaign commercials in free nations, not in dictatorships. Would it have been bad to have a 30-second "negative" campaign spot attacking Fidel Castro in Cuba, Adolf Hitler in Germany, or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe?
What is Boren's solution? "With each passing year, the necessity is becoming more evident to amend our Constitution to solve this problem." Boren argues that, "A constitutional amendment would free us from the limits of Supreme Court decisions."
This amendment would allow only those who can vote in the election to contribute in the campaign. Boren would also limit total spending by the candidate himself.
Boren's proposal would certainly increase the clout of the liberal media in the influencing of elections, but more conservative voices would be stifled.
Boren also takes on the need for a "bipartisan" energy policy. His solution?"The government could develop a guaranteed floor price for alternative fuels." He also advocates more conservation, but not one word is wasted on a call for increasing our supply through the building of more refineries, and the drilling for oil off the coast of the United States and in ANWAR.
It is interesting that calls for bipartisanship from Democrats always lead to proposals for more government control of our lives. While Boren laments the number of lobbyists in Washington and offers his solutions of limiting political contributions and the like, I offer another possibility. Perhaps if government, especially at the federal level, did not control an increasingly larger part of our lives, then maybe there would not be as many lobbyists in Washington.
