FEC MIA
I guess I had grown used to coverage of an election season being seasoned with comments to and from the Federal Election Commission. If not garnering whole articles in the media then references sprinkled throughout the political coverage. But mention of the FEC has been in the breach: Unlike most election seasons for the past thirty years there has been little reference to the FEC this season (FEC_Wikipedia). This is not a case of someone one with a web log having an original thought and turning that around. When I took my sense of absence to Google News to see what would return for question I saw that two recent two events were driving it back into the news now. Confirming a general view I have that there is nothing that is not agenda driven. There may be facts, raw information after a lesser manner, though not news and no opinion without PR agenda
With the FEC Inactive, the Complaints Fly | The Trail | washingtonpost.com. But I'll play along. First there was the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Lawsuit against the McCain campaign for their dance macabre with public financing. Egregious especially for their ability to apparently use such cash flow as virtual collateral for loans that would render resorting to public finance an unnecessary move. Despite the seeming sanguinity involved, as a legal case it is apparently weak and of vague merit. I don't think the legal issue was precisely the point
Marc Ambinder (April 14, 2008) - Does The DNC's Complain Against McCain Have Merit? The press coverage, the public comments tendered, the demonstration that resort to the courts was felt necessary because the FEC itself had not dealt with this was. The other event was the ex FEC chair Robert Lenhard withdrawing from renomination effort when it became evident the republican candidate he was twinned with was never going to be acceptable to the democratic leadership. Before disappearing into that good night of the private sector it was arranged for this to make a fat and visible federal diary page entry in the Washington Post
FEC Nominee Withdraws Name After Long Impasse - washingtonpost.com. I imagine Sen. Reid's calculation about damage not done by non functioning FEC figured into this. The FEC currently has only two commissionors in place where six are mandated
No FEC quorum means no FEC decisions - UPI.com. The republican nominee Hans von Spakovsky is the point man for ideologies whose political viability is tied to a general rollback of democratic franchise. Through all this the FEC will still operate at low level bureaucratic level all existing rules and requirements are still in place. Data collection on candidates activities will continue on autopilot. Any higher level decision making and rulings will be absent as this article in the Mother Jones details:
Out of Commission . This FEC is a creature of congressional stalemate
FindLaw's Writ - Hasen: The Collapse of the Public Financing System for
U.S. Presidential Campaigns Blame Congress, Not the Candidates, it represents the preferred bipartisan outcome of existing office holders. Many in Congresses are already the handpicked representatives of some regionally powerful home interest to which they owe their first allegiance. Hollowing out the FEC simply encourages more powerful interests to own the remainder of them.
Government by and large is the practice of balancing general vs. special interests. The former diffused in their needs and lacking formal organization except by the mechanisms of the vote. Most federal agencies dedicated formally to the general interest of all Americans have a dedicated constituency of particular organized institutional or corporate interests. It can only be hoped that in the competition of these special interests something approximating the public interest emerges. The FEC has politicians as its interested parties. They are mainly interested in consuming its services in the negative, in regulation that does affect them, but perhaps ties the hand of their opponents. There is little interest in a robust and empowered agency with ability to cast light into all their shadows.
For the general public its hard to feel ownership in something that doesn't appear to deliver concrete benefit or be yours at all. For myself I never gave the FEC much thought until it seemed that the private though publicly promulgated political conversation of web logs might either be onerously regulated or left unprotected to bitter partisanship attack both of which would serve to chill it out of existence
The Free Press, Mankato, MN - Our View: Do not regulate political bloggers. It was easy for me to see any relationship with the FEC completed in that. If the FEC is to survive and hold any relevancy at all it must do as some here have pointed out and develop a real constituency. This constituency must be broader than just the elected politicians who pick its members and set its budget. Ways must be found of breaking or placing at greater remove congresses control over the FEC's affairs
FixtheFEC.org. I don't think the FEC can operate like other federal commissions holding meetings setting out occasional notifications for public comment on rule-making, but otherwise sitting back and waiting for organized interests to encircle them. I do not think either that public interest groups attempting to operate in behalf of the broad public have sufficient gravity behind the to replace the public. FEC must get out and take their concerns to the American people and the concerns from the people. I know that the commission and bureaucratic set are disposed towards the attitude that you learn nothing sitting in high school auditoriums and listening to yahoos. They are neither congress nor the wealthy to create congressmen in such places only the people, fingers brushing the empty eddied air around an increasingly distant government.
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