A look at the rough-and-tumble of the political process. Don’t like it? It’s not likely to change, say our veteran political panelists. Excerpt from the talk on March 14, 2012.
ANN RAVEL, Chair, California Fair Political Practices Commission; Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Torts and Consumer Litigation
BILL JONES, Former California Secretary of State
???SUSAN KENNEDY, Former Chief of Staff for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; Former Executive Director, California Democratic Party
KIRK HANSON, Executive Director, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University – Moderator
KIRK HANSON: Ann Ravel, as head of the FPPC, what worries you about this year’s campaign season? Do you think we’re about to embark on a period of even more negative campaigning and more influence by money?
ANN RAVEL: I don’t think there’s any question that we will be seeing a lot more money in politics and probably lots of violations of the law as well. The bigger question tonight that’s being asked is, “Must politics be a dirty business?” It’s ironic, but Richard Nixon, who of course was the architect of the Watergate scandal and the reason why the Political Reform Act was enacted in 1974, has said, “I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.”
What I see for the next election are three things that I’d like to address. One of them is, of course, the rise of super PACs and what that has done to politics on the national level, and what the impact will be in California, though California has for a long time permitted independent expenditures.
The second thing that will hopefully increase the public sense that politics isn’t a dirty business is more disclosure, more transparency. Everybody talks about transparency, and unfortunately we don’t have a very robust system for giving information to the public. That’s something we need to change.
Finally, as the chair of the FPPC, I have to say that I think the FPPC has participated itself in some of the negative views of government and negative views of politics by emphasizing small issues – small transgressions – and identifying them as if they are ethical violations, rather than actually going after big issues.
HANSON: Bill, it’s been a number of years since you had some of the responsibility for the voting process as secretary of state. How have things changed, and what worries you this year?
BILL JONES: The issue of politics in general – this whole question of the intensity or the negative campaigning – is not new. You can go back all the way to Abraham Lincoln; you can go back further than that. What is new is the intensity of the media coverage. With a 24-hour cycle, it makes everything heightened. When I started in public life, there were three television stations, you get a direct mail piece, and some 4 x 8s on the highways, and that was the campaign. Today, you can’t get away from it. Politics has turned into ratings, and that means there’s money in it for the stations and for the media, which in turn puts all the candidates in an environment that – while they always were interested in publicity, now they are a vehicle for the ratings. If you’re going to do a talk show, they don’t want you to come on and agree; they want you to come on and fight. They set the tenor there that creates an awful lot of controversy which then is magnified and goes out to the public. It isn’t even that the issues have changed as much, but – as you just mentioned – we’ve always had independent expenditures in California; they have to be reported.
When I was secretary of state, when we started, we just had paper. If you wanted to come in and see what anybody gave, we gave you paper. We moved on to technology. Now you’re moving on – and I compliment you for your effort. But no matter how much disclosure you do, as long as the politics and this 24-hour news cycle are competitive, it is going to create a different dynamic that is heightened, and if you want to compete, it requires money. You’re always going to have money in politics. I believe strongly that disclosure is the key. The better disclosure you can get, the better off you are. I do believe that the super PACs should be disclosing; then let the process continue as it might.
I think one thing about this year, at least in our primaries for president, it is amazing that someone like a Rick Santorum can do what he’s done with hard work and knocking on doors, and overcome this media. Part of the reason that’s true is because of the debates. Public discussion, public debates – I used to hate them when I did them; I did three when I was running for governor and one for the U.S. Senate, and they’re not fun. They’re not fun for the participants to get ready for – they’re very tough – but it’s very good for the public, because it’s unfiltered.
When you get right down to the question of the dirty politics, politics isn’t any different than anything else. You have to know the people who are running, and you have to elect people who have good character and have an interest in serving the public, and then you will get a better quality of government. The intensity of the process is going to continue as long as the media is there.
HANSON: Susan Kennedy, to some extent you’re a symbol of bipartisanship, as a Democrat working for a Republican governor. On the other hand, you’re a symbol of someone who tries to be bipartisan and gets attacked from both sides. Is the atmosphere as vitriolic in state government day to day as it seems to be in the campaign process?
SUSAN KENNEDY: The simple answer is yes. Whether you live in a democracy or a dictatorship, politics is a dirty business. It’s the intersection between power, money and human beings. You’re going to have problems. Campaigns are a blood sport. We need strong referees like the FPPC in order to keep cheating to a minimum, but it is as much entertainment, as Bill said, as it is an important part of our democratic process, because we choose our elected officials that way.
The most important thing is, it’s not more poisonous or more vitriolic today than it was. If Twitter had existed in the early 1800s, half our founding fathers would’ve been run out of town on the rail and never elected to office.
What has changed is [that] we’re in a period of permanent campaigning. It’s governing itself that has become poisonous. People are frustrated because they elect people to office on a series of campaign promises that they hear year after year after year, but then when people get to where they’re going, whether it’s Sacramento or the city council or the White House or Congress, they don’t see change. They don’t see people dealing with problems. We don’t elect statesmen such as Bill Jones to office anymore, and I’m not just blowing smoke because he’s sitting next to me; he is truly considered one of the last statesmen in California politics, in the era where we solved big problems. We’re electing people to office now with a very myopic view of their time in office, and a necessarily selfish and limited view, because they’re always running for the next office. I think the poison has entered the governing process much more so than the campaigns.
HANSON: There are two [audience] questions about asking you to define dirty politics, and where’s the line between fair, tough, negative politics and dirty politics.
KENNEDY: Truth and untruth.
JONES: That’s a fair answer.
HANSON: So, any accusation that is true is fair game?
KENNEDY: Yes.
JONES: I think campaigns are about vetting candidates. If you don’t want to be vetted, you’d better not get in the game.
KENNEDY: There are things that are, I think, still off-limits. Those lines get blurred – you know, how you treat family members; how you treat personal issues – but if it’s true, it’s fair game.
JONES: I would agree.
