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Excesses, new
and old, in political campaigns
By Jim Surber
Recent bantering in online comments about the huge amounts spent in
modern Presidential campaigns got me to thinking. Is our spending on
this unprecedented? I decided to do a little research, to learn how our
ancestors dealt with this event, and was surprised at what I found.
In the early years of the republic, gentlemen would be asked by other
elite leaders to "stand" for political office, and the candidate's
commonly-acknowledged character and experience were expected to speak
for themselves. No money was needed, and none was spent.
This next fact, courtesy of Harper’s Weekly, was of particular
interest.
“The presidency was considered too dignified and sanctified a position
for its possible occupant to sully both himself and the office by a
public display of personal salesmanship and supplication.”
As American politics democratized in the early 19th century, nominees
began "running" for public office by promoting their candidacies
through speaking tours and other forms of electioneering. This was true
at every level of government except for the presidency, where the
dominant attitude of the public and especially the press remained
opposed to candidates openly and actively campaigning.
Americans were very distrustful of granting power to national leaders
who appeared too ambitious. The president was supposed to be above
partisanship so that he could represent and act in the national
interest and for the common good. It was Congress, as the most
important and democratic branch of government, that was to make law.
The president was to administer it fairly, not engineer domestic policy
as a sort of chief legislator.
As the 19th century progressed, these ideals eroded first in practice,
and later in theory. Presidential candidates changed their
participation in three areas: 1) the level of involvement in the
campaign, from passive to active; 2) the extent of access to the
electorate, from absent (private), to occasional, to frequent (public);
and, 3) the addressing of issues, from silent, to indirect, to direct.
Still, how much was relatively spent on Presidential campaigns?
It is not surprising that the growth of electioneering in the 19th
century required considerable sums of money to finance the process.
Groups sponsored public dinners or banquets, party meetings began to
charge admission, and the well-to-do were called upon to heavily
contribute to underwrite expenses.
The franking privilege, by which members of Congress can send out
"official" mail free of postage costs, became a way for parties to
shift part of their campaign expenses to the taxpayers.
How much was actually spent on Presidential campaigns then versus now?
The Lincoln campaign of 1860, the largest up to its time, spent
$150,000, or a sum that would be equal today to about $2.8 million.
In the 20th century, the campaigns of 1968 and 2000 were standouts in
high spending over the 100 year period.
At over $6 billion, the campaign of 2012 was the first to follow the
Supreme Court ruling that granted corporations freedom of political
speech, and is by far the most expensive—or is it?
While every four years we rightfully complain about record campaign
spending in the most recent election, we are very wrong. For all the
trainloads of dollars that super PACs have thrown into this
post-Citizens-United election, reality is that the 2012 campaign isn't
even in the same league as the most expensive election ever. One former
campaign saw more spending than in 2012 and the next three priciest
elections combined.
This was the Presidential campaign of 1896.
Unbelievable as it may seem, while the record dollar-spending of 2012
was equal to just over 0.01 percent of the Gross Domestic Product;
spending in 1896 was nearly 0.05 percent of GDP. What hatred or
controversy in the contest between William McKinley and William
Jennings Bryan could have sucked this amount of cash (almost 5 times as
much as 2012) from the system?
The answer is (Franklin Roosevelt notwithstanding), in 1896 big
business was united against a single candidate as they never have been
before or since. The object of this hatred was, in a word, silver.
Bryan wanted the backing of US currency to include silver as well as
gold, and the economics of the time were on his side.
The 1890’s were the heyday of the gold standard, but also of deflation
and depression. The US economy was in recession more often than not for
a simple reason—there wasn’t enough money, because there wasn’t enough
gold. In 1896, prices were 30 percent lower than 24 years earlier.
Lenders were being paid back with dollars that were worth more than
when they made the loans, and borrowers were paying back those loans
with much more valuable dollars than they were loaned.
Wall Street bankers feared inflation much more than they did
bankruptcies. This inflation-phobia is why big business threw such
unprecedented and since unmatched sums into defeating Bryan and his
pro-silver platform. (Ironically, the economy still got inflation even
without Bryan’s silver, thanks to major gold discoveries in South
Africa in 1896 and in the Yukon in 1898).
As much as Wall Street hated Dodd-Frank in 2012 and hated
Glass-Steagall in 1936, it hated silver with a raging, singular passion
in 1896. It's hard to understand now, but at that time business
couldn't conceive of civilization without the gold standard. They
believed silver backing would cheapen their money and pose an
existential threat to the world as they knew it, and they did not spare
any money to defeat it.
I wonder what those same men would think today after gold, and then
silver, were finally too scarce (or too valuable) to back our money
which now has only the “full faith and credit of the US government”
behind it.
Over the years of our nation, it is clear that Presidential candidates,
and sitting Presidents, have certainly relinquished a great amount of
decorum and dignity held by their predecessors. While we all may
believe that current campaigns spend too much, they are still
relatively small when compared to that time when big business resolved
to defeat an economic ideology, at any cost.
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