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Stuck In Traffic
"Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories"
Issue #23 - February, 1997
Contents:
Can't Stop The Tide
Campaign finance reform is a hot topic in Washington these days,
but will any of the current proposals work? Probably not. All the
current proposals are doomed to failure because they focus on
the money instead of the power that attracts the money.
It's The Story, Not The Glitz
The marketers promoting the "special edition" of the Star Wars
trilogy have failed to realize what makes Star Wars worth
seeing again after 20 years.
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Current Events
You Can't Stop The Tide
The latest fashion in political scandal is exposing to public view
the unseemly contributors to the campaigns on one's political
opponents. Not only is a candidate for office supposed to serve
as role model to the world in terms of his public and personal
conduct, not only is a candidate supposed to hold himself to a
higher standard, candidates are now responsible for the moral
character and conduct of contributors to their campaign. It is
guilt by association to the highest degree.
So, for example, if you accept a large campaign contribution from
a guy who later turns out to have been an arms dealer who sells
arms to your country's enemies, you are supposed to have known
this and refused to accept the contribution. It's a noble goal
and certainly one that is feasible up to a certain extent. If you
are going to accept millions of dollars from a particular
organization, it would only be prudent to know who you're "getting
in bed with" before you accept the money. But in the heat of a
political campaign, where contributions are flowing in from
thousands of sources, it's impossible to perform a background
check on every single contributor. There's just no time,
especially with small contributions.
Since a political campaign organization can never fully
investigate the background of every contributor, there's always
going to be cases where a candidate accepts money from people and
organizations with whom he'd rather not be associated. And it's
nearly impossible for a candidate to distance himself from an
unseemly contributor after the money has been accepted. The only
thing the candidate can say to the public is, "Hey, I had no idea
this contributor was an arms dealer, a child molester, and a tax
cheat. If I had known, I wouldn't have accepted a single penny
from him." To which his political opponents can simply respond,
"But you should have known." And the candidate's reputation is
tarnished in the eyes of the public.
The bottom line is that campaign finances make for very easy mud
slinging. So Washington's all in a tizzy these days about
something called "Campaign Finance Reform."
Getting Back To That `Vision' Thing
Americans have a tremendous capacity for idealism, especially when
it comes to political institutions. It shapes our expectations
about what government should be and how it should operate. One of
the most fundamental of our idealistic expectations of government
is that the voices of each individual citizen, simple and humble
though he may be, are plugged directly in to the decision making
process in Washington. We want our elected representatives to
shape their policy and make their decisions based solely on what
their individual constituents want.
It's OK then, for a politician to accept a contribution from the
Average American Family. It's OK to accept contributions from Mom
and Pop's Grocery Store, since they are a small business employing
regular folks in the district. What's not OK, it seems, is for
people to aggregate their money in political action committees and
contribute to political campaigns from PACs. What's not OK,
according to our idealistic vision of government, is for a
politician to accept money from contributors outside his district.
The public sees this as being "bought out". These activities
represent an interference in the communication between the
politician and those who elect him. Most of the "Campaign Finance
Reforms" being proposed are attempts at removing these
interferences, but most cause as many problems as they are hoping
to solve.
Limiting The Size Of Contributions
The traditional approach to campaign finance reform in the past
has been to limit the size of political contributions, both from
individuals and corporations. The exact limits vary depending on
whether the political campaign is a federal or state campaign and
depending on whether the contributor is an organization or an
individual. But usually the limit is somewhere between one
thousand and four thousand dollars.
These limits are already on the books, well institutionalized in
law, and well understood. Yet there is still a perception that
politicians are being bought out with million dollar
contributions. How can this be? Usually it's because large
contributors find ways around the limits by filtering their
contributions through multiple "middlemen." Sometimes this
filtering is very blatant and direct, like the case where large
contributors from the Pacific Rim filtered campaign contributions
to the Clinton campaign through members of Buddhists temples in
California. Sometimes the filtering is more subtle. Sometimes
it's not a matter money laundering, but simple collusion. A large
PAC or organization can simply decide which candidate to support
and then each of the constituent members of the organization
dutifully, but independently make the maximum contribution they
are allowed. Money doesn't actually flow through the
organization, it's more like a cartel where individual members
trust each other to abide by the decision of the group.
It's very difficult, perhaps impossible, to stop this sort of
collusion. But some reformers are proposing even lower limits to
campaign contributions anyway. It's like the king, who upon
hearing that all his horses and all his men couldn't put Humpty
Dumpty back together again, told his court, "that just says to me
that I need more horses and more men." Campaign contribution
limits are flawed in concept, not in degree.
Furthermore, lowering the campaign contribution limits any further
would begin to affect grassroots politicians who really do raise
their money in small contributions. While the grassroots
politician is still going to get most of his contributions in
increments under a hundred dollars, there are going to be a few
individuals willing to contribute up to current limits. If these
limits are lowered, the grassroots candidate is going to suffer.
And the grass roots candidate is not going to be able to set up
money filtering schemes with his small budget. But organizations
that want to pump millions of dollars into a campaign have the
incentive to invest in ways to circumvent the limits. So it's
likely that lowering contribution limits any further would
actually hurt the grass roots candidate more than they would hurt
the candidates that depend on PACs and big organizations.
Limiting The Origins Of Contributions
Another approach to Campaign Finance Reform being proposed is to
limit contributions to a candidate's campaign to individuals that
live in the candidate's district. Obviously this is an unpopular
proposal among politicians whose districts do not represent a very
high concentration of wealth. Poorer districts will have less
vigorous campaigns. Wealthier districts will receive all the
attention from PACs and other large contributors. You can bet
there is a lot more money dedicated to PACs and campaigning in New
York City than there is in the deserts of Nevada. So trying to
restrict contributions by geography puts some politicians at a
disadvantage to others and doesn't solve the fundamental problem.
And more importantly, limiting contributions by geography is a
clear violation of free speech protection guaranteed by the
Constitution because elected officials often make policy decisions
that affect more people than just those in their district. For
example, Jesse Helms is the ranking Senator from North Carolina,
but as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he makes
decisions that affect the entire country every day. Suppose you
didn't approve of Helms' advocated policy with regard to Cuba.
Shouldn't you be allowed to contribute to his opponent's campaign
even though you don't live in North Carolina?
Elimination of Soft Money
The so called "soft money" concept is one of the biggest scams
ever perpetrated on the American people. The scam works like
this. In order to avoid appearances of impropriety, PACs and
other large organizations do not contribute directly to an
individual candidate. Instead, they contribute to the candidate's
political party. Contributions to political parties are called
"soft money" because they are, by law, not spent on individual
candidates but on the party's business. In other words, they are
contributions to the ideals and agenda. But the Democrats and
Republicans have shown over and over again that their principles
and agenda are as much for sale as individual politicians are. A
PAC is not going to contribute a large amount of soft money unless
it has some assurance, perhaps only informally, that the money
will be spent in a manner that favors the candidates that it
supports. So, for example, the Democratic party can run
television commercials selling the voters in a particular district
on the merits of a tax increase and indirectly support the
Democratic candidate in that district who is running on a platform
that calls for tax increases.
The problem with the soft money approach is that it removes the
appearance that the candidate has sold out to a PAC, but at the
same time it increases the candidate's obligation to the leaders
of the party and it's political machine. The candidate's
incentive is to suck up to the party machinery rather than to
represent the people in his district. But since "soft money" is
perfectly legal, the candidate can claim to have not "sold out."
So some reformers have proposed "the total elimination of soft
money." But this proposal has even thornier free speech
implications. Since the whole idea behind a political party, in
theory anyway, is to serve as a focus point for representing
principles in public debate and putting those principles into
action. Any limitation on political party contributions would be
a limitation on entering the "marketplace of ideas" and
participating in public debate.
Public Financing Of Campaigns
Of all the campaign finance reforms being proposed, public
campaign financing is the most fundamentally flawed and the most
short sighted. The idea is that since it costs so much money to
run an election campaign, politicians are "forced" to accept
contributions from PACs and other big dollar organizations because
out of necessity. So if the candidates are allowed to spend
taxpayer money for their campaigns, they won't sell themselves to
the highest bidder.
The first problem with this scheme is that there's nothing to stop
a politician from tapping into both the public treasury and
contributions from others. And since the politicians themselves
control the spending, it would be like giving them a blank check
to do whatever they want with tax payers' money.
And giving them a blank check to spend on their campaigns would be
even further complicated by the fact that they are also the ones
that will decide who qualifies for tax payer funds. You can bet
your bottom dollar that the rules for "qualifying" for tax payer
funding of a campaign will favor the incumbents in a race, since
the incumbents will be the ones writing the rules. So public
financing has a huge potential to stifle competition in elections
rather than increase it.
But even if politicians had hearts of gold, even if their
reputations were above reproach, financing election campaigns with
tax payer money would still be a bad idea because it totally
destroys one of the fundamental checks on power in our government.
It removes the accountability politicians have to the people who
elect them. The accountability an elected official has toward his
constituents comes not just from the fact that they cast votes for
him, but from the fact that his constituents support him during
the campaign. If a candidate for office, did not have to raise
money from his constituents, campaigns would degenerate into
competitions about which candidate will get the government to
spend the most on the district. Under public financing of
campaigns, votes will be bought instead of earned.
Fixing The Problem
In order to effectively reform how campaigns are financed, we must
first recognize and accept the fact that money and power go
together. Money naturally flows to wherever power is
concentrated. Trying to invent ways to block money from flowing
from special interest groups and PACs into the hands of
politicians is only treating the symptoms of the problem without
addressing the fundamental issue. You might as well try to stop
the tide.
If one accepts the fact that money flows to politicians in
proportion to the power they hold, then the solution is obvious.
Their power as individuals must be diluted.
There are two main ways to dilute the power of an individual
politician. First, we can decrease the size of districts so that
there are more elected individuals in the governing bodies. Some
representatives will still hold more power than others. For
example, the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee will
hold more power than representatives that are not on the committee
at all. But in general, the more votes that are cast on an issue,
the harder it becomes to buy enough politicians to ensure the
outcome you want. The Founding Fathers of this country understood
this concept and this is why they fixed the size of districts when
they wrote the Constitution. As originally written, the
Constitution called for the number of representatives to increase
as the population of the country increased. It wasn't until this
century that the Constitution was modified so that the number of
representatives is fixed. Thus as the population of the country
increases, their power increases.
While decreasing the size of districts and increasing the number
of elected representatives would be an effective way to dilute the
power of individual politicians, most Americans would feel
uncomfortable, if not queasy, at the thought of having more
politicians running around. But the second way to dilute the
power of individual politicians is more palatable, if more
difficult to implement. Governing power needs to devolve from the
higher levels of government down to the lower ones. It is much
more difficult for special interest groups to buy the legislatures
of all fifty states than it is to buy key committees in the
federal legislative branch of government. It is much more
difficult for a PAC to buy out all the county commissions across a
state than it is to buy a state legislature.
It will be a difficult task to wrest away power from legislators
and give it back to the lower levels of government. But it will
be easier than trying to stop the flow of money into their
pockets. Politicians won't stop being bought until they are no
longer worth buying.
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Cultural Phenomena
It's The Story, Not The Glitz
With the punctuality of a digital clock, last month's release of
the Star Wars special edition trilogy was perfectly preceded by a
publicity campaign. C3PO himself could not have timed it better.
Interviews, TV specials, and sales promotions have permeated
pop-culture the past couple of months, all hyping the release of
the special edition of Star Wars.
But why would anyone care? Why go see this movie again?
To hear the publicicists tell it, the reason we need to see Star
Wars again is that there is "a whole generation" of people who
have never had the pleasure of watching Star Wars on a big theater
screen. Fair enough. Just as Disney re-releases its classics for
new generations of kids, it would seem reasonable for a movie that
has wedged itself deep into our pop culture to be rereleased every
now and then.
But unlike Disney, the marketing types behind Star Wars haven't
spent so much time trying to portray Star Wars as a classic, like
it deserves. Instead, they have portrayed the re-release of Star
Wars as an _update_ to the original. Previously cut scenes have
been added back, the special effects have been enhanced and
cleaned up, and the sound track has been totally rerecorded and
enhanced. We are teased and tantalized in commercials with
glimpses at all the new stuff and this is supposed to be the
reason why we'll shell out another six or seven dollars to go see
Star Wars yet again.
To give credit where credit is due, the special edition release of
Star Wars lives up to its special effects promise. The soundtrack
is much crisper, there seems to be more variety in the types of
sounds the various machinery makes, especially the guns. The big
guns make big sounds and the small guns make small sounds.
There's much more color in the special effects also. The light
saber fight scenes in particular have a richer glow to them.
The added scenes, for better or worse, do not contribute to the
story in any significant way. There's a bit more elaboration on
the empire's pursuit of the two `droids, which seem to have been
added for no other reason than to allow the special effects guys
to past in some computer generated dinosaur like things that they
use as mounted transportation.
There's an added scene between Han Solo and Jabba that duplicates
almost word for word an earlier scene between Han and one of
Jabba's underlings. Again, there's no apparent need for this
scene other than the chance it gives the effects guys to show us
that yes, in fact, Jabba can move.
The one added scene that contributes to the story is a meeting
between Luke and his best friend Biggs who joined the Rebellion a
year before Luke did. Not only do you get a glimpse of Luke as a
real Person instead of a mythic figure, it establishes the fact
that Luke is capable of flying a fighter, something that always
bothered be about the original.
But even with all the polishing up, Star Wars still looks dated by
today's standards. And if the techno-wonks behind the scenes
wanted to bring Star Wars up to today's standards for special
effects, they failed miserably. There's just to much that can't
be fixed. Darth Vadar's mask, for example, still looks like it's
some sort of discarded car part from a junk yard. The storm
troopers still look remarkable stiff and silly. There's still a
shot in the cantina scene where you can peer straight through one
of the alien's mask. And those 70's era haircuts still look out
of place for a galaxy far, far away.
In other words, all the add ons are just glitz. Instead of taking
the high road, instead of portraying Star Wars as a classic fairy
tale born in a new era, instead of portraying Star Wars as a
classic to be cherished in its original, the marketers behind Star
Wars have added a heavy layer of marketing glitz that the movie
simply doesn't need. Even the original characters have undergone
extensive makeovers wherever possible. The new movie posters give
the Princess more curves than she ever had in the original movies,
the New Luke looks more like a lean mean fighting machine than the
naive, idealist that the original Luke. And Chewbacca looks like
a walking advertisement for a hair products commercial, complete
with color highlighting in his well groomed hair.
What makes the added glitz even more ironic is that it's the
_dirt_ that partly makes Star Wars seem so believable. Watching
Star Wars on a TV screen, you lose much of the detail from the big
screen. On TV, Star Wars looks like so many other futuristic
sci-fi movies where everything is well lit, clean, and utopian.
But on the big screen you see all the details and the details you
see are dirt. The droids especially stumble through the movie,
beat up, scratched, dented, and covered with grit. Han's ship
_is_ a piece of junk, and the Rebellion is obviously operating on
a shoestring budget, to say the least. All these details add to
the feeling that Star Wars is set in desperate times.
And it's the sense of desperation that sets the stage for Star
Wars, not the special effects. Amid the desperation arises "A New
Hope" as the movie's episode title tells us.
New hopes rising out of desperate times is a classic theme in all
story telling, especially when the New Hope arises from unexpected
places and unexpected people. If the team behind Star Wars has
forgotten this, the public at least has not. This is why Star
Wars will forever be one of the classics in movie making and big
effects movies like Independence Day and Twister are doomed to
obscurity.
Let's face it. Star Wars would not have been the big hit that it
was if Luke was just another guy who managed to find his way off a
poor, unimportant planet to a more lucrative career in smuggling.
Star Wars would have been a dead end movie if Princess Leia had
been just another pretty bimbo working her way up the diplomacy
food chain by blasting anyone who wouldn't sleep with her. Star
Wars wouldn't have deserved a second visit if Han Solo and
Chewbacca were just scruffy looking mutineers out to make a quick
buck. Star Wars would not be so inspiring if Darth Vadar wasn't
so evil. And what's the point of having androids in a movie if
they don't also portray some human element?
It's too bad that the Star Wars team couldn't have also spent some
time polishing up the story. Because where the special effects
and techno wizardry where great for its time and could not be
improved much for the special edition release, one wishes that the
story line of Star Wars could have been beefed up a little,
polished here and there.
Yes, Star Wars tells a classic fairy tale of good vs. evil. And
one of the key reasons Star Wars succeeded is that the Good Guys
won in a era of movie making obsessed with blurring the
distinction between good and evil and moral ambiguity reigns. But
it's kinda thin in the plot department. The term "cardboard
character" could have been invented for this movie. How, for
example, did Leia get caught up in the Rebellion? Where did she
come from? What's her grudge against the Empire? Why exactly is
there a civil war in the first place? Unlike most movies of good
vs. evil, the evil Empire is actually the revolutionary movement
and the Rebellion and the Imperial Senate represent the good and
the status quo of the institutions. It's easy enough to hate
Darth Vadar since he sounds ominous, dresses in black, and always
wears a mask, just like every villain in history. But it would be
nice to know a little more specifically just why we are supposed
to hate him. And Luke, poor Luke, hero of the whole shooting
match, how did you learn the ways of The Force in a mere couple of
hours?
But no matter, Star Wars can't be changed. It's a thin story, but
it's the right story. All the necessary elements, no matter how
thinly constructed, are there in the plot to touch the romantic,
idealist in all of us. And that's what makes Star Wars worth
seeing again after 20 years. Let's hope that George Lucas doesn't
forget this in the next trilogy. Stuck In Traffic
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About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating
current events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true
stories.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an
opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the
personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of
the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring,
the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible
situations, but the best possible situation you could be in.
After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so
much trouble to induce...."
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Submissions to Stuck In Traffic are always welcome. If you have
something on your mind or a personal story you'd like to share,
please do. You don't have to be a great writer to be published
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Contact Information:
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy
Powers preferably via E-mail (
[email protected]) or by mail
(2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
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Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy
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