Fund-Raising Phone Tag
Nothing exposes the sham at
the heart of the campaign-finance hearings like the obsession over what type of
phone was used to solicit contributions. The phone rule asks not how
much money was promised over the line. It asks what kind of phone
was used in the solicitation. Was a cellular phone used? That's kosher. Car
phone? That's OK, too. A phone in a rented room steps away from the Capitol?
Still OK. In the office? Off with your head and into the arms of an independent
counsel!
Meanwhile, as the hearings
made headlines, the Republicans delivered a $50-billion tax break to the
tobacco industry, which just happened to have given the party $1.9 million.
Don't expect congressional hearings on that giveaway while the Republicans have
phone calls to prosecute.
This
current phone obsession illustrates our declining standard of behavior for
Washington politicians. We once imposed sanctions on them for their
improprieties. Then we started punishing them for the appearance of
impropriety. Today, we'll tolerate almost any outrage as long as its
perpetrators maintain the appearance of propriety. Genuine propriety would
still be nicer. But in its absence, we settle for politicians who abide by the
rules (like the phones rules), which are devised to cloak impropriety in
propriety.
Most scholars and the Congressional Research Service
believe that the Pendleton Act--the law Republican senators believe prohibits
office-holders from calling from federal property for donations--doesn't apply
to the president and vice president. What's more, the act, which was passed
only a few years after Alexander Graham Bell's invention, didn't really
envision phones. The legislation was designed to keep elected officials from
using the majesty of their surroundings to shake down visitors or employees.
Today's potential donor doesn't know if a politician is calling from the
Capitol or the car--and he doesn't much care. The ethics committees of the
House and Senate have spelled out very specific rules for members to
follow--one of which prohibits making or taking fund-raising calls. All this
excess of zeal in using the right phones at the right time lets members of
Congress pretend they're cleaning up the system without actually stemming the
flow of money.
This guile over what
constitutes a legal solicitation explains the existence of several hot-sheet
hotels on Capitol Hill where some lawmakers go to make--and take--all their
fund-raising calls. About 100 steps from the portal of the Rayburn House Office
Building, on the second floor of the annex to the offices of the Republican
National Committee, stands a maze of cubicles separated by padded teal-green
dividers of the type you see separating the operators who take your call for
the Ginsu knives. Between less pressing business--like running the
country--members of Congress hunch over 3-foot wide slabs of Formica, working
up a sweat dialing as many donors as they can. Like most of us, they rarely
reach their prey on the first try. If they're lucky, Mr. Moneybags returns the
call, but usually by that time the importuning politician is back in his
Capitol office. Does he put up his feet and take the call from Moneybags when
Moneybags is ready to talk? Or does he race down the stairs and cross the
street to his padded cell and call his benefactor back? You be the judge.
It's
absurd to think everyone uses the setup for dialing--so many members, so little
space--and most members fudge when asked point-blank. Rep. Dan Burton, chairing
the House investigation into finance abuses, had to equivocate when asked two
weeks ago whether he hadn't indeed taken fund-raising calls in his office. "I
can't say never ... many times they [potential donors] will call back at your
office and therein, as Shakespeare said, 'lies the rub.' "
A number of members have admitted that they
take, and make, the calls from the Capitol. Sen. Phil Gramm (cash is a
candidate's best friend) bragged in an interview about raising money from his
office using a credit card. When challenged on the legality of that, he pointed
out correctly that the Justice Department had never prosecuted anyone under the
law, so the Ethics Committee stood down. There were calls to hold an inquiry at
the time but, according to the Wall Street Journal , the matter died
because Sen. Mitch McConnell adamantly opposed opening an investigation because
so many other senators were probably guilty of the same thing. A former staff
member of Sen. Al D'Amato's says that when a donor called, the New Yorker used
to try to stretch the phone cord into the bathroom like a teen-ager trying to
keep his parents from overhearing his conversation. A consultant to Sen. Don
Nickles, the pit-bull questioner at Sen. Fred Thompson's hearing, says that he
witnessed Nickles taking calls from potential donors in his office. Sen. Bob
Smith, considering running for the Republican nomination for president, left
his office number on an answering-machine message, asking for a donation. When
it was reported, Smith's office said it was a one-time mistake. Political
cross-consultant Dick Morris said on CNN, "Would you like me to embarrass 15 of
my former clients by telling you when I sat in their office[s] and they made
fund-raising phone calls?"
Congress
may have agreed that calls should be made from an annex, but the executive
branch never did. In the immortal words of Vice President Al Gore, there is no
controlling legal authority that says elected officials can't make calls from
federal property. Putting aside the fact that both he and the president live on
federal property, the Congressional Research Service and a host of other legal
scholars said that the law does not apply to phoning from either office.
Of course, officeholders shouldn't dial for dollars from
their official digs. Not because dialing is evil, but because they shouldn't be
hustling money at all. As long as members of Congress continue to divert
attention from the fact that money flows in at the same rate that favors flow
out, the televised "fight" over their fund-raising methodologies will allow
them to pretend they're reforming the system.
Meanwhile, the Capitol is up
for sale. Operators are standing by.
