Senator Hollings and the Money Chase
Every now and then in this business we're lucky enough to come across a politician who truly tells it the way he sees it. Former South Carolina Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings has been in politics long enough to have a pretty clear idea of how things work in Washington (he was first elected to the Senate in 1966), and in his recent July 25th appearance on Bill Moyers' "Journal" on PBS, the Senator spoke about the endless money chase that has come to define his chamber today.
"All the time is fundraisers. All the time is money, money, money, money. In 1998, ten years ago, I ran and had to raise $8.5 million. The record is there. $8.5 million is $30,000 a week... Each and every week for six years."
According to Hollings, the bottom line in national politics today is not about constituents or ideas or serving the national interest--it's about money. "The game is money. I've got to get the money -- to heck with constituents, I've got to get contributors."
In such a climate, Hollings continued, it's all but impossible to get real governing done. "I've talked to the senators; you ask them, they know they're not getting anything done... They're grown men and they're conscientious women... but they know that all they're doing is on a money treadmill. That's all it is."
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Though Hollings may be throwing in a bit of hyperbole for effect, poll after poll shows that Americans are fed up with a system they believe is more concerned with serving the lobbyists and special interests who help to fund campaigns, than with advancing the public good.
How to break free? The answer is simple, according to Hollings: "You've got to untie that money knot and then the government will begin to work." Voluntary public funding of elections would do just that.
