The Democracy Project
The more I needed, the less you gave
Last week in Washington, Republicans gathered for the biggest political party fundraiser in history.
Together we have raised $16.3 million to elect Republican candidates.
How much does it cost to get a seat at the political table?
Tonight on Frontline
What determines who gets which seat?
A whole lot of money.
A whole lot of money?
So you want to buy a president?
You pay the money if you get the access.
Sleazy, frankly.
Buy a what?
$400,000.
Buy a president.
It's a national disgrace.
You get the access.
You're in the game.
Who's buying presidential favors?
Fat cats.
Buying influence.
He gives to both sides.
The bottom line here is raising money.
Every side wins, right?
Tonight, correspondent Robert Kralwich examines the big business of campaign finance.
So you want to buy a president?
Funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and by annual financial support from viewers like you.
This is Frontline.
Additional funding for this program was provided by the Florence and John Schuman Foundation
and by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Sir, what do you do for a living?
I know I should know.
Some of you might have missed this on television this fall.
It was a prime-time broadcast of a gala fundraiser from Ford's Theater,
the place where Lincoln was shot.
And in the front row was the President of the United States.
And up on the stage was the comedian Paula Poundstone.
And she was trying to figure out who gets to sit next to the president.
What determines who gets which seat?
Do you do the whole seating chart?
Do you know the guy behind your head?
Very well.
Who is that?
Carl Linder.
Carl Linder?
I'm sorry, I'm not familiar.
What made you give him that seat?
That will tell us who it is.
A whole lot of money.
A whole lot of money?
Carl, I'm sure it was much deeper than that, sir.
It was money and love, little buddy, don't you worry.
What's Carl's role in the community?
Carl, why do you have so much money?
Is that rude to ask?
Sir, what do you do for a living?
I know I should know, but since I don't know, would you tell me?
Mr. President, do you know who Carl Linder is?
Would you mind telling me?
It's a secret?
He's in bananas, sort of like you are.
He's in bananas?
Is that true, sir?
He what?
You're the Chiquita Banana Guy?
Gee, sir, without the fruit on your head, I don't even recognize you.
Is that true?
Why does the President know the Banana Guy?
Now, there is an interesting question.
Why does the President know the Banana Guy?
Well, Carl Linder is a big supporter of Ford's Theatre, which is why he was there.
But before he was the Banana Guy, Carl Linder was an ice cream guy.
He dropped out of high school at 14 to work in his dad's dairy store in Cincinnati.
Now, 55 years later, he's built the business into a 200-store chain, United Dairy Farms.
Carl Linder, you should pardon the expression, is a big banana in Cincinnati.
Besides the convenience stores, he runs an insurance company, a bank, a local TV station, and Chiquita Bananas.
And he is part owner with friend Marge Schott of the Cincinnati Reds.
I guess the thing that fascinates me the most about Carl is he was a self-made man.
He knows how to deal. He's a wheeler-dealer.
You see this white Rolls Royce going down the road, and he'll be driving with his phone up.
And on the phone, he has raised lots of money for presidents.
He collected $106,000 for President Bush's two campaigns.
And before that, he lined up support for a little-known candidate.
Carl called me, and he says, you want to have breakfast with a guy who he's going to run for president?
A little guy from Georgia, and he says it costs about five grand apiece.
All right. I remember Carl saying to Jim Carter, Jimmy, you and I have something in common.
These other guys don't have in the room here.
He says this room is filled with Catholics and Jews, and he says, you and I are the only two Baptists.
Lindner's never wanted to be a candidate.
I don't think he's ever been interested in running for anything.
Of course, he doesn't have to run. He's got his other guys running for him.
These days, he has thousands of people working for him.
And every year, he invites almost all of them down to a Christmas party downtown.
It is a gala affair.
He always brings in a well-known celebrity.
This here is Andy Williams, and he's bringing in his Christmas show.
My guess is, yes, he'd be up to about a million dollars, three-quarters of a million, a million dollars at a party.
A million-dollar party, Andy Williams, big bonuses.
Then, to top it all off, this year, Carl played his people a video.
Carl, why do you have so much money?
Why does the president know the banana guy?
Well, as long as she asked, since 1988, Carl Lindner and his company, Anacetra, have been working together.
Since 1988, Carl Lindner and his company and associates have given $650,000 to the National Democratic Party.
So that could be why the president knows the banana guy.
It was money and love, little buddy. Don't you worry.
Well, if it was love, this little buddy apparently loves the Republicans even more, giving that party $1.5 million.
So they know the banana guy, too.
I got him on the phone. I said, what were you doing there, right behind Clinton? He laughed about it.
He said, well, I was here, he said, because I support that place. I said, OK, Carl. Yeah.
Almost on a daily basis, some part of his business is affected by what's going on in Washington.
And when Carl Lindner has a problem, he knows that he can pick up the phone and he can get the attention of a lawmaker
who is going to have direct influence on his particular problem.
David Owen was lieutenant governor of Kansas and was chief fundraiser and campaign chairman for Bob Dole.
There's a small group of people that know how to play the game, that contribute the money and raise the money
so that they can have absolute impact on legislation that affects their company or their industry.
I'm Chiquita Banana, and I'm here to reveal the way to spot a great banana.
Right now, Carl Lindner's Chiquita Banana Company is having a little problem.
Do I think he is talking to anybody he can talk to in the president administration, in the Congress and in the Senate?
Absolutely. I think in the last couple of years, they've lost over $400 million to nothing but trade restraint
kinds of policies in Latin America and Europe.
Well, maybe, but here's what we know. For years, Chiquita grew lots of bananas and then got contracts and sent them to Europe.
It was a good business.
So when the European Union announced that it would restrict its contracts, Chiquita suddenly found itself cut off.
Chiquita said its sales suffered, profits dropped, and Carl? Well, Carl went to Washington.
Chiquita, which does not grow bananas in the United States, demanded that America retaliate
by protesting in Europe and punishing Costa Rica and Colombia for going along with the scheme.
The White House was sympathetic.
Senator Robert Dole told his colleagues that he, too, wanted sanctions against Costa Rica and Colombia.
In the middle of the national budget debate, he attached a banana bill to some budget legislation
and told senators bananas are a top priority.
Were you surprised to see bananas in the middle of the budget debate?
I serve on the Finance Committee. You're never surprised by anything.
So bananas were just another day at the office.
What happened was Chiquita bananas, or whatever the bananas were, it was an inappropriate place.
I mean, these things come up from time to time, and this wasn't even a close call.
The banana amendment stalled, but Carl Linder took a different tap.
Carl had gotten a meeting in Miami with the president of Colombia.
He forcefully presented his case.
Mr. Linder tried to show how powerful he was in the United States by taking out of his pocket
quite a number of photographs of himself with President Bush, President Reagan,
and I think Republican leader Dole.
Besides, he mentioned he was going to have breakfast with Speaker Gingrich next morning,
and I think that was too much.
I've been very near power myself. My father was president of Colombia,
and I'm not easily moved by these kind of things,
either by threats or by the fact that people are friends of influential people.
So I thought it was a very bad taste.
And just one taste of my banana says the sticker was right.
Then this fall, on the way home from the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin in the back of the president's plane,
Senator Dole urged the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, to take up the banana case, and Gingrich agreed.
So on the president's plane, in the Congress, at the White House, with the president of Colombia,
everybody was discussing bananas, in part because Carl Lindner got those conversations going.
Who else gets this kind of attention?
Well, back on Capitol Hill, we wondered if a senator enters the office and faces a stack of phone messages,
whose calls does he take? We asked former Missouri Senator John Danforth.
When your wife calls you on the phone, you're likely to take the call.
When your best friend calls you on the phone, you're likely to take the call.
When people you've known all your life call, you're likely to take that call.
When people you've heard of, or people that you know, or people you think have some position,
I mean, that's obvious, I think.
And people who contribute big money?
Yeah.
I'm just wondering, what do I get from giving money to you?
If I give you $10,000 over a number of years, would you know my name?
I may or I may not.
$50,000, including my wife, my three children, and our first cousins.
If you were a major fundraiser, I probably would. If you raised a sizable amount of money, I probably would.
So if it's Tuesday at 10 o'clock in the morning, and I call you because I'm very concerned about something,
do you take my call?
You know what? The best people never make that call.
I'm not the best people. I'm kind of a mediocre person.
But I've called you and I've given you...
All right, so you know the question. Do you take the call?
I may or may not. Depends on how I feel on that day.
Depends on what the issue was.
If you don't take the call, I could be mad at you. No more $30,000.
Well, you know, those are the breaks.
This January, Carl Lindner got a break of sorts.
The White House formally declared that Colombia and Costa Rica violated free trade laws.
The U.S. will not impose sanctions, and Senator Dole, who's gotten lots of media attention for his banana work, has backed off a bit.
But still, Carl Lindner now has official government backing for his position, and he didn't have that last year.
Can you think of any society throughout history, go back if you like to Hammurabi or someone,
where the rich people have not been able to use money to buy favors from the king or the powerful class, anytime, anyplace?
Oh, I think that's pretty much the case down through history. As you say, there are minor interruptions.
You have periods where the rich are really in trouble politically.
I think we could fairly say that in 1793 in the terror in France, they were in trouble.
Then you have periods in which it's kind of a normal balance, which is to say that, yes, money buys favors,
but it doesn't buy so much that it perverts the culture of the political system.
Then you rise to certain points where it does, and these are usually in the periods of excess, periods of great corruption, and speculative bubbles.
What was the high point in the last hundred years of American history?
The Gilded Age right at the end of the 19th century, the Roaring Twenties, and then the last 15 years.
About a year and a half ago, President Clinton arrived in California on Air Force One.
Joining him were three former U.S. presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators,
and some of the most important political figures of the last 40 years.
The occasion was former President Nixon's funeral.
And there, coming down the stairs, was a man who'd known them all,
President Carter's former special trade representative, Ambassador Robert Strauss.
Well, in those days, people dealt primarily in cash.
Most people preferred to give their contributions in cash, and most people preferred to receive them in cash.
Then there came a period of time, really growing out of Watergate,
when legislation that had been on the books and laws that had been on the books started to be enforced.
And that's when a change took place.
Now, if you look closely, there was one man on the plane who never served in any government position, that guy.
Duane Andreas, president of a giant food company, ADM,
is possibly the champion political contributor of our era.
He happens to be a man who believes very genuinely that people who run for office ought to be supported.
And he supports them on both sides, and people who agree with him disagree with him.
If you come by and you make a good impression on him and say,
I want to run for this office, Mr. Andreas, I'd like to have support, he's apt to give you some support.
Back in 1968, Andreas supported the Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey
with a $100,000 contribution sent through his company.
Andreas was accused and then acquitted of making an illegal contribution.
I have never profited, never profited.
Four years later, he delivered $100,000 in cash to the Nixon White House to be kept in a White House vault.
Hunt was said to be the man who recruited the other conspirators.
While another Andreas donation, $25,000 in cash, found its way to the Watergate burglars.
The image of wealthy businessmen sneaking cash to politicians angered the public.
...advisor to the Nixon campaign staff.
Someone solicited him for a contribution. He gave him a contribution.
It went the wrong place.
You can't blame him for that.
Right now, if I am a donor, what are the rules? What are my limits?
Well, you can only give, as an individual donor, a thousand in the primary and a thousand in the general election.
Just for me. How about my wife?
Well, that too.
How about my kids?
Children, absolutely.
If I have 16 children, I can give $16,000 plus the two for me and my wife.
Is there any limit on the amount of money I can give to the Republicans in general or the Democrats in general?
In terms of campaign and strict party contributions, yes, but in terms of soft dollars, this is a loophole which exists.
What does it mean, soft dollars?
Soft dollars are soft legally because they're not really legal, but they are.
They're given for purposes which are really party-building activities and mostly at the state level.
And as a result, people can just pour money in to the party coffers through soft dollars.
There's no $1,000 limit here?
No.
You and I and 14,000 others have raised over $9 million through this event alone.
This dinner put on by the Republican Party four years ago raised more campaign money than any previous meal in American history.
Nine million in one sitting, and up on the dais right next to Dan Quayle, a quarter century after Hubert Humphrey and then Watergate and Nixon,
there sits Dwayne Andreas, still there, and his contribution on this night, $400,000.
Well, he supports presidents. He supports presidents.
That's what a good businessman does, instead of carpeting and criticizing them, he supports them.
They support them.
It's always taken money to run for president, but this year it's more expensive than ever.
The field is so crowded and the primaries are bunched as never before.
So to stand out, TV and radio and direct mail and polling are more important than ever and they cost more.
At this point, the candidates have spent five times more than they'd spent four years ago.
How much money do you think it takes to make a serious run for a nomination so that you'd get noticed and have a serious shot at a national political nomination for the presidency in gross numbers?
Before the multimillionaires entered the race or billionaires entered the race, I would have said you could do it on $15 million.
But if somebody like Forbes is going to spend $25 million at the start and perhaps double that, it's impossible to say what it takes to run.
How much has the fact that you can only get it in $1,000 or $5,000 nibbles affected the amount of time you had to spend as a money raiser while you were running?
Fundraising is very, very time-consuming and the heart of the effort, I would spend two or three hours a day on the phone raising money.
Did you like doing it or did you not like doing it?
I've grown accustomed to its face.
If you want to be in politics, if you really want to be in politics, you have to learn to like a lot of things that you don't like.
And fundraising is a necessity, and if you want to be in this particular line, you have to learn to accommodate to like fundraising.
The next president of the United States of America, Senator Bob Dole.
There are, of course, a number of ways for a candidate to attract money without the $1,000 or $5,000 limit.
David Owen knows that.
Having worked with him for 20 years, it was you start off calling, I'm calling for Bob Dole and it's Bob who,
to you finally get, I'm calling for Bob Dole and they can't wait to get on the phone.
Owen was Bob Dole's chief fundraiser until he was convicted for filing false tax returns and went to jail.
He has since parted company with Dole.
The two don't speak, but over the years, he says, he's seen politicians accommodate donors who want to write big checks.
There are any number of ways that big fundraisers can participate, and Bob Dole gives them a lot of ways.
Well, you start off with his Senate campaign fund.
Campaign America is a political action committee. The Dole Foundation, which is an organization he set up,
you had the Better America Foundation, and you have the presidential campaign funds.
That's a lot of ways you can help.
With so many options available, it's kind of interesting to pull together the numbers and see who has given Bob Dole the most money over the years.
According to a new book by Charles Lewis, here are Bob Dole's top five lifetime donors from the bottom up, beginning with number five.
This is a conservative pack.
Number four is our friend Dwayne Andreas, the champ.
Number three, Coke, that's an oil business.
Number two is a financial firm.
And number one at the very top, oh, look at this, the Gallows.
Now, why would Ernest and Julio Gallo, who have a vineyard out in California,
why would they give $381,200 to a senator who lives next to Cornfields in Kansas?
What is the connection here?
Well, as you are about to see, the Gallows treat their politicians kind of like grapes.
They plant their seeds early, and then they wait.
And they are very patient.
Gallows headquarters is hidden behind these trees.
Unassuming, no corporate logo, no sign that lets you know this is the biggest winery in the world.
The Gallows like their privacy, and they have secrets.
But you had to look exactly like your brothers, right?
He's the brother you never heard of.
Joseph, the youngest of the more famous brothers Ernest and Julio,
he told his family story to journalist Ellen Hawks.
Two brothers, Michael and Joseph Sr., came to America at the turn of the century,
setting out to make their fortune.
Michael Gallo was caught posing as a priest and arrested for selling land that did not exist.
His brother Joseph married, had three children, got into the grape business, and bought a vineyard.
Prohibition was not the best time to be in the grape business, but the Gallows did well enough,
and the boys, Ernest, Julio, and their younger brother Joseph, pitched in.
The Depression, however, took its toll.
Sales dropped, many vineyards failed.
But then something happened that nobody in the family talks about.
On June 21, 1933, the bodies of Ernest, Julio, and Joe's parents were found shot to death on their farm outside Fresno.
And it was officially designated as a homicide-suicide, namely that the father Joe killed the mother and then shot himself.
Ernest and Julio took over, and after Prohibition, they began to expand the business.
Julio was Mr. Inside. He grew the grapes, he hired the labor.
While Ernest was Mr. Outside, managing the rough and tumble of sales and distribution.
Younger brother Joe was hired as an employee.
The business prospered in the low end of the market.
The Gallows' most famous brands were Paesano and the highly fortified cheap wines like Thunderbird and Ripple.
Then the company decided to broaden its reach and go national.
But the alcohol business was regulated by states and counties, so Ernest had to deal with politicians all over the country.
His most pointed political education came when he started to build the sales structure and was pushing Gallow wines nationally.
It was at that point that he started running up against not only the federal regulations,
but from state to state and county to county the regulations would change.
So Ernest was a very active lobbyist cultivating politicians who were the most useful to him.
Ernest planted money all over the political landscape to help pave the way.
Thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars to Alan Cranston.
A thousand dollars for Leon Panetta starting his career in Congress.
Five hundred dollars for Jerry Brown, who was then running for Secretary of State.
By the 1970s, the Gallows were doing very well.
Here they are with the rest of the family. There's Ernest and Julio getting a little peck on the cheek.
They are a large family now.
The brothers had eight children plus their families and twenty-four grandchildren.
There's little Micah.
It's my pleasure as the godfather of Micah to wish the best wishes to Micah and Sherry and Mike
and all the family that had something to do with this child. Toast.
By now, the Gallows were so wealthy, if either Ernest or Julio died,
the business might have to be broken up to pay the inheritance taxes.
So they tried to change the law.
A Washington law firm designed some legislation and gave it to Senator Alan Cranston,
who had been helped by the Gallows in a tough re-election campaign.
Cranston brought the bill to the Senate floor on a rare Saturday session,
and with only a handful of senators present, it passed.
The Gallows got what they wanted, but the newspapers noticed,
and the critics charged that the Gallows had bought the amendment.
On the floor of the Senate, Senator Robert Dole referred to the law as the Gallow-Wine Amendment.
But at the end of it all, somebody was left out of the party, Ernest and Julio's younger brother, Joe.
He and his side of the family were the poor relations.
They'd worked for Ernest and Julio, but then in 1986, Joe got to see his mother's will
and discovered that he had not been told by his two older brothers that he was named as an equal beneficiary.
He went to court, but he could not prove he was entitled to a share of his brother's business.
I interviewed him during the trial. I see him now.
Joe has never been the same.
Ernest and Julio kept control of the family fortune and the business,
the biggest wine company in the world.
They were multimillionaires, but the more they had, the more they had to protect.
So they kept helping politicians.
The young mayor of San Diego, Pete Wilson, became a U.S. Senator and then a governor.
The Gallows have given him $55,000.
Leon Panetta, whom the Gallows had given $33,000, was now a rising star in Congress,
where by 1986, the mood was changing.
Democrats were rewriting the tax code, and the Gallows saw another chance to lower their inheritance taxes.
That session, everybody came to town.
The halls were full of lobbyists trying to get to their favorite politicians.
They were just inundated with calls about, you know, you understand what you're doing to my business, my company, my industry.
You know, if you just put in this little amendment here, that would solve our problem.
And once it started, it opened a floodgate.
So the Gallows turned to David Owen's boss, the man who eight years earlier had dubbed their bill the Gallow Wine Amendment.
When it first came up, I'm sure that the Gallows weren't people that Bob Dole knew.
But he figured out it was someone that he needed to get to know if he were going to play in the national political arena in California.
And so he made it a point to get to know them.
And when he got to know them, that provided the access.
The new Gallow Amendment passed, and in one week while the bill was being written, Senator Dole received four $5,000 contributions from Ernest,
and then Ernest's wife, and then Julio, and then Julio's wife.
The money went to Dole's Political Action Committee.
And in the years since that amendment, Senator Dole and his foundations have received $1.1 million from the Gallows and their associates.
The new amendment could have saved Ernest roughly $23 million in estate taxes, and the same for Julio, who died in 1993.
Let's say just for the sake of argument that what we've just seen is the Gallows sprinkle a little money into the political arena,
and they get a bill that is worth, say, $23 million to their grandchildren.
If they were trading money for favors, and we don't really know that they did, but if they were, isn't this a terrific deal?
If one considers it to be an investment of $1 million or $2 million in order to get $20 million return, obviously it's a very good investment.
On many minor issues, it is possible, as a result of political contributions, to get special treatment in the law.
At a really low price.
There's no question about that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the entire system is corrupt.
But when you see a bill passed by the United States Congress that affects very, very few families in the United States,
can you assume that hadn't one of those families put a little money in the right places that there would be no such law?
One can make that assumption, absolutely. They probably would not have done it had it not been for the contributions.
When a family like the Gallows tries to ask for a favor or implies you, how do they do it?
They've never approached me, so I don't know what their style is. I don't know what their strategy is.
Most people who want to affect legislation work through high-priced Washington lobbyists,
who insulate them from direct involvement.
So that you would never meet Ernest Gallo, you'd meet some other guy?
Probably. Probably.
And it's said no one knows how to work these halls better than our friend Duane Andreas and his lawyers Aiken, Gump, and Strauss.
He's a man who knows politicians personally, who gives tremendous amounts of money, both hard and soft,
and then stays in the background while lawyers talk to staff people, while trade association executives mingle with congressional staff.
The message is always given indirectly. The way he operates is a way in which you can never tie a particular contribution to a particular vote.
It's a very sophisticated, very subtle way. It's high-class and very expensive.
Talk about high-class, Duane Andreas has another way to help his friends.
He owns four jets and a turboprop, and whenever he chooses, he lends them to candidates.
Bob Dole has used Andreas' planes 28 times since 1990.
In fact, Dole has a whole list of plane-lending friends.
His staff knows that if they want to travel anywhere, all they have to do is pick up the phone
and call someone in corporate America who has a nice jet airplane and say that they would like to use that plane for a political trip.
And there's nothing illegal about it. All they have to do is pay a first-class airfare for the use of the plane, and they can fly anywhere they want to.
First-class airfare, that's all?
That's all.
Wait, wait, wait. This plane is not like a real—I mean, it's available when I want it.
It will fly me to Cedar Rapids or onwards to Council Bluffs at a time when there's no—or to the town where no planes fly.
So it's not like a—
It's like a charter. It's like a charter.
Even though the cost of flying that plane may be much more.
Much more. Let me give you a number.
If you wanted to take a first-class ticket from Washington to L.A., that would cost $3,000.
If you want to fly in a Gulfstream 4 at your own bidding with the thing ready to go whenever you—and then land whenever you—and go wherever you please, it would cost about $40,000 to $50,000.
So you're paying $3,000 to get what is, in effect, a $50,000 service.
Looing the math, that strikes me as a $47,000 advantage.
There's no question that it's an advantage. It's a benefit.
Companies seem to sense this is a very valuable favor.
There are so many planes available now that politicians can get choosy.
And it almost gets to the point of, I don't want to go in—I don't want to go anything less than a Gulfstream 4.
Gulfstreams are deluxe jets, and Carl Lindner's brother Robert owns one.
You remember Carl, the banana man from Cincinnati?
Well, the banana man's firm has an air hanger that has a glass picture window so you can look in and see the planes.
And in 1995, Senator Dole flew on these planes 12 times.
This plane here, for example, is the exact same plane you see here on a campaign trip to New Hampshire.
But the biggest jet of all is the one we own, Air Force One.
Last September, President Clinton did a quick hop to five cities in a week and raised $5 million for his campaign.
It costs more than $36,000 an hour to operate Air Force One.
But all President Clinton paid was first-class airfare for his staff, $44,000.
That is less than an hour and a half of flying time.
Is it true what most people say that United States senators don't know about transferring in Minneapolis
because they're always on these kind of planes?
Yeah, I think that is a gross exaggeration.
One might even say a kind of bas—well, I mean, I think it's a gross exaggeration.
One of the best moments of my years in public service was on the Washington, New York shuttle on a Friday night
when I was squeezed between Paul Volcker, who was then chairman of the Federal Reserve,
and some other cabinet official in the administration.
I was in the center seat. I thought to myself, hmm, I guess this is democracy.
It's that season again.
Politics in Iowa.
Where presidential candidates will do just about anything to draw a crowd.
This is the Charlton Heston NRA Celebrity Shootout,
and these folks are here to support Senator Phil Gramm's campaign.
We've got people coming from all over the state.
We've had a real grassroots effort, and I'm very proud of it.
How's Wendy?
Good. She's here somewhere.
Where is she?
Out here at the shoot.
Hi. Nice to see you.
One way to influence a husband, of course, is to do something nice for his wife.
Thanks for taking care of the weather, you know.
You're entirely welcome. I'm glad you noticed.
But as we shall see, this approach can be exquisitely difficult.
When a woman in a leadership position is married to a political candidate,
she is going to be disadvantaged no matter what she does,
and she's going to create conflicts of interest if she tries to pursue her career.
She came to Washington as the wife of a politician,
but she could have come in her own right.
She's a Ph.D. in economics, a former government official.
Ronald Reagan called her his favorite economist,
and he appointed her to chair the CFTC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
I speak for all my fellow commissioners
that the commission will continue to use all available means to protect the public confidence.
As chair of the CFTC, Wendy regulated futures contracts for commodities
like beef and soybeans and pork bellies,
and some say she also regulated her husband.
On this, there will be no compromise. Thank you.
Wendy Graham, because she's different than Hillary, is going to be dismissed by some.
They do it at their own peril.
She is very, very important to Phil Graham,
not only to his person, but to his politics.
She just has a different style of affecting that politics.
When Wendy Graham left the government,
she was offered positions on a number of corporate boards,
sometimes by executives who were strong supporters of her husband.
This raised the question, if she joined, would that become a problem for Phil?
Women in positions of leadership are faced with the question,
should I sacrifice my career in order to avoid conflicts of interest,
or should I pursue my career and as a result accomplish what I could otherwise accomplish
and run the risk that my husband is at disadvantage,
because it looks as if the boards that I'm serving on, for example,
are creating problems for him and his political campaign.
Mr. and Mrs. Alec Cortellus.
Take this event.
Mr. and Mrs. Charlton Heston.
It was a big fundraiser for Phil Graham.
$4.5 million raised to kick off his campaign.
A co-chair of the event was Kenneth Lay.
Now, Mr. Lay is the president of Enron, an oil and gas firm
that Wendy Graham regulated when she was in Washington.
Now, she's on his board.
She gets $22,000 plus some fees,
but early last year Enron gave $18,500 to her husband's campaign.
And so we have a difficult ethical situation,
because the question is, would the woman have been there in any event,
or is she there because specifically the corporation is attempting to buy influence
with the candidate through the candidate's spouse.
Take the case of another board Wendy's on, the IBP, Iowa Beef Processors.
This company controls one-third of the U.S. beef market.
It is the world's largest meatpacking company.
IBP has had its share of difficulties with the government.
Labor problems, wage problems, immigration problems, union troubles.
IBP is an ideal case study.
Wendy Graham belongs on that kind of board.
She has a Ph.D. in economics.
She chaired a commodities exchange.
There's no question that she's qualified to serve on the board.
She's given remuneration for being on the board.
That puts money into the family coffers.
But more importantly for Phil Graham, IBP is a major employer in Iowa.
It's important not just because of the famous Iowa caucus,
but because there's an early straw poll here.
It's the candidate's first chance to get big headlines.
The straw poll is a kind of beauty contest.
For 25 bucks, anybody, even if you don't live in the state, gets to vote.
But some candidates have been known to buy up blocks of tickets
and then round up people to give them to.
On this occasion, Phil Graham got some help.
Two and a half weeks before the vote,
Iowa Beef Processor sent this memo to its employees,
encouraging them to attend and participate in the straw poll.
The company said the Graham for President campaign would provide buses
and tickets to all interested employees, and the memo ended,
Plan to See You There.
Please vote for me. I will let you down.
Who at IBP decided to help Phil Graham?
The company's president, Bob Peterson, would not be interviewed.
But we were able to talk to his close friend and biggest cattle supplier, Bill Hall.
The history of IBP for all the time I've known them
is that they're a completely non-political organization.
So I was surprised. I asked Bob what had happened.
I gave a very clear and concise and, as always, straightforward answer,
which is he had been asked by a director to do a favor in supporting the campaign,
and he had responded as he felt any good chairman and chief executive officer would.
He responded by doing the favor for them.
So it seemed to me, my impression from Bob was,
that he was simply responding to a request from a valued and respected director.
Was that Director Wendy Graham or Alex Kurtelis?
Alex Kurtelis was then Phil Graham's finance chairman and Wendy's friend.
Was Wendy aware or informed of this decision? She wouldn't say.
Wendy Graham didn't have to ask IBP to act as it did.
Wendy Graham can reasonably assume, as can Phil Graham, that IBP will do that.
By virtue, however, of putting Wendy Graham on the corporate board
and participating as it did in the straw poll,
IBP has established that it's a friend of the Grams,
and one can reasonably assume that politicians are disposed to reward their friends.
Senator Graham did very well in the beauty contest.
To the surprise of many political observers, he tied the front-runner Bob Dole.
But Graham wasn't the only candidate who had questions raised about his wife.
Hillary Clinton stayed on boards well into her husband's presidential campaign.
And then there was that matter of the $1,000.
What I thought we could afford to invest, I told him $1,000.
Her $1,000 investment gave her a $100,000 return.
And the question was, was somebody trying to do her husband a favor?
You know, not all my trades made money. Some of them lost money.
Lamar Alexander's wife, Honey, turned a $10,000 investment in Whittle Communications
into a $300,000 windfall.
And then there's Elizabeth Dole, twice a cabinet secretary
and until the campaign head of the American Red Cross.
Curiously, while she was there, the Gallo brothers sent the Red Cross
their largest cash contribution ever, $100,000.
In the case of Bob and Elizabeth Dole, she's such a public person
and such a powerhouse in her own right.
When they help her, I think they believe that they're helping him.
What's new this year in loopholes?
Well, many of these loopholes have been around for years.
Chuck Lewis has just written a book about money and campaigning
called The Buying of the President.
You can hide money. Millions of dollars can go into a fund.
It can be created basically to make you look good as a candidate.
And you never have to release the donor information.
How do you come out? Do you come out convinced that elections are in huge part
favors for sale or in tiny part favors for sale?
Or somewhere in the middle?
I think that in huge part.
In huge part?
Yeah, I was taken aback actually.
I did not realize how expensive things had gotten.
This is the most expensive presidential campaign
and the most expensive political campaign in U.S. history.
The numbers are absolutely off the charts.
But just because there's a lot of dollars chasing candidates,
does that mean that there's a lot of selfish people
trying to turn the system to their own purposes?
Or couldn't it mean that there's just a lot of wealthy people
who want to express broad philosophical issues?
I think there are a lot of wealthy people
that do want to express broad philosophical issues.
I think there are also a lot of very narrow specific vested corporate and labor
and other vested interests that have very narrow agendas that they want pursued.
The presidential campaign is not a horse race or a beauty contest.
It's a giant auction.
The president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton.
This is a Clinton fundraiser in California.
Applause
Some of these people, of course, are stars.
But they're not Clinton's all-stars,
the ones who've given him the most money over the years.
Thank you, Tom Hanks, for introducing Al Gore.
Thank you for not introducing me.
Chuck Lewis compiled that list,
so here is his top five lifetime donors for Bill Clinton starting at the bottom.
So we'll start with number five.
Well, number five we're not going to tell you later.
We'll tell you later in the program.
Number four, Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, which is a law firm.
Number three, the Jackson Stevens Group.
They're a big business in Arkansas.
Number two, a New York teachers union.
And number one, Goldman Sachs, which is a Wall Street firm.
And former home of President Clinton's treasury secretary.
And now let's do Senator Graham.
Again, same thing, top five lifetime donors as of mid-1995.
Chuck Lewis's list will start again at the bottom.
Number five, First City Bancorp in Houston.
Number four, Boone Pickens, the oil man from Texas.
Number three, the Conservative National Committee, that's a lobbying group.
Number two, the American Medical Association.
And Phil Graham's number one, the National Rifle Association.
Now, Phil Graham is famously proud of his ability to raise money.
But the fact is it's very hard work because you've got to deal with that $1,000 per person limit.
The limit has been in place for 20 years, and it has not been adjusted for inflation.
It has not been indexed, and it should have been.
The reason is that if one counts a $1,000 contribution today,
considering the value of the dollar in January 1st, 1975, when that law went into effect,
a $1,000 contribution today is worth about $300.
And every one of you should be happy and proud that you happen to be alive at this period of profound change.
If we do our job, the best is yet to come.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
So the campaign limits have had the odd effect of forcing politicians to spend more time raising money
because you've got to work three times harder now just to stay even.
I don't know if the average American understands this.
If you raise $20 million in one year, that's $55,000 a day.
Bill Clinton did not start until April.
In the first six months he was raising money, he raised in excess of $100,000 a day.
Now, you don't do that with backyard barbecues.
There are certain people that can give that kind of money and raise that kind of money
and pull together events where that kind of money is generated.
And this is not a Ma and Pop type thing.
This is a big-time money machine.
Remember that five-city campaign trip that President Clinton took on Air Force One?
Well, one of his stops was in San Francisco, and the occasion was a fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel.
Good morning.
Good morning.
He is very excited.
Money came to town for a chance to catch a glimpse of the president, and here he is.
Just behind him there's Vice President Gore, and he's giving a little bow to Clarence Clemens.
The president now will stop and have a few words with his supporters,
but who's the guy with the bald spot?
Shorenstein and Ernest Gallo.
Ernest Gallo, Bob Dole's single biggest contributor,
the man who gave over a million dollars to the Republicans, he's here.
It seems that in just three days Ernest Gallo raised $100,000 for this event,
and at this point he is number five on President Clinton's list of all-time givers.
But why?
How does the president know this wine guy?
Let's go back a few years.
It turns out in the last election Mr. Gallo had not given to the Clinton campaign
until days before the election when he gave some money to the Democratic National Committee.
He'd given heavily to Bush and to the Republicans.
But the nifty thing about our system is it's very forgiving,
and there are lots of ways to give.
So Ernest Gallo gave $40,000 to the Clinton transition.
But what could Washington do for Gallo?
Gallo is the biggest wine producer in the country, nearly a billion dollar a year business.
And their market share is big and stable, so they need to expand worldwide,
and that means marketing their wines to other countries.
And guess who helps them pay for commercials like this?
Imagine that you're a chairman or a president of a major corporation in this country
and Uncle Sam walks into your office and tells you, I've got a deal for you.
Here's the deal.
I subsidize your foreign advertising budget in exchange.
Well, in exchange you do nothing.
You just get the money.
So far, the Gallos have received $30 million under the Market Promotion Program,
a piece of legislation pushed by California agribusiness
and originally backed by Senator Pete Wilson and Representative Leon Panetta.
Remember them?
Both longtime Gallo political favorites.
It was passed in 1985 as Dole Amendment 1167.
But not everybody in the wine business is happy about this bill
because it is structured to reward the biggest producers.
Bill McIver is the owner of a small winery in California's Sonoma Valley.
I look at the MPP as a tax rebate for Gallo, basically.
I mean, they get 48% of the funds,
and it's really virtually no use whatsoever to small wineries.
This is how it works.
The government gives its money to the Wine Institute.
It's a trade organization that critics say is dominated
by the biggest producers, led by Gallo.
Nothing comes automatically.
You have to be good at what you do,
and the funds that you receive are based on your performance.
And I get back to the original equation.
You give the funds to the people who show that they best know how to use it
and are successful, and that is as American as anything else.
Frankly, it infuriates me that the American people is giving Gallo
that has revenues of almost a billion dollars a year,
850 to a billion dollars a year,
that the taxpayer would fund something like this.
It's a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.
Last Labor Day, when President Clinton came to town,
he stopped for a few hours in California's Central Valley.
He met with workers.
And with his chief of staff, Leon Panetta,
he met with ranchers and farmers.
Then he went behind closed doors for a private meeting with Ernest Gallo.
We don't know what they talked about except for official statements
which say they discussed NAFTA and the threat of low-cost Chilean wines.
But the next month, the ad promotion program was reauthorized
with President Clinton's enthusiastic support and, for good measure,
with an increase of 30 percent.
But what if you're in business and you don't want the government's help?
Outstanding.
In the hills of Northern California,
there's a group of people who want to keep their distance from Washington.
We all have a hobby in Silicon Valley.
Mine happens to be wine.
And typically the hobby is pursued with the same energy as your life.
T.J. Rogers is one of the new entrepreneurs who've made their fortunes in Silicon Valley.
You go on into Saturday and Sunday,
and then you do something else on Saturday and Sunday with equal intensity.
Yes, I think in this valley, people are a lot like me.
They are proud of the fact that they haven't needed government favors
or government protection.
We rarely have ever discussed politics,
because politics, politicians in Washington don't matter to us.
They are a burden, a drain in the economy.
We create wealth, jobs and money here.
They're somebody far away and hopefully will stay far away.
Historically, candidates don't raise a lot of money in Silicon Valley.
David Barham was chief financial officer at Apple Computer.
You don't wake up in the morning thinking, gee, I'd like to give it to a candidate.
That's just not the way it is.
Bill Clinton walked into this rarefied atmosphere looking for votes, endorsements and money.
So to get them to give, they had to really believe in the ideas of this guy,
and that he needed the money in order to get his message out.
They could understand that because all of us in those companies were marketing products,
and we knew that in this world you have to spend some money to get your message out.
To get the money, candidate Clinton went to high-tech dealmaker Sandy Robertson.
Sandy Robertson runs Robertson Stevens.
He's an investment banker, has raised $250 million for the company.
So he called me and said, you ought to come up and talk to Clinton.
He may be president, and he's here to listen to what Silicon Valley thinks ought to get done in Washington.
Great idea, no.
It's always difficult raising money, and there's a fairly large ticket to come to that.
Got another letter, refused again.
Got a personal phone call from an investment banker in San Francisco, refused again.
It's not easy.
Called my significant other to have T.J. come up.
Called me again.
Hey, why don't you want to talk to candidate Clinton?
He might be the president.
He's here to listen.
So I finally got convinced.
Then the next day I got the little letter.
Thank you for coming to talk to candidate Clinton.
Please enclose your check for $1,000.
So I wrote with my red pen, NFW on his invitation.
It sent it back to him, just that.
No friggin' way.
But Robertson put together a major fundraiser anyway.
During the campaign, we had about 135 people in the room, all from Silicon Valley or the biotechnology community,
and raised about $400,000 for his campaign.
I think there were $20 billion of sales represented in the room.
We all had a meeting, a private meeting with the president around a great big mock-up of a computer chip.
It was a very free-form discussion of what the issues were.
There were two or three questions that they wanted to get clear before they would finally agree to support.
And then everyone who wanted to walked out on stage and endorsed him.
I'm very impressed about the responsiveness of the campaign.
And frankly, it's very refreshing, and I'm enthusiastic about the process.
It was led by John Young of Hewlett-Packard and John Scully of Apple.
It was a pretty exciting, interesting day.
I think it made just an enormous difference in the campaign.
When candidate Clinton became president, at first there seemed to be a happy consensus.
We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Silicon Valley believed that it would build the backbone of the information superhighway.
But that's not what the new vice president had in mind.
He wanted the government to build an information superhighway the way his father had helped build the interstate highway system in the 1950s.
Superhighways, Futurama's free-flowing channels of concrete and steel.
But these wide lanes of reality actually measure out...
That's not what the guys in Silicon Valley had in mind.
The concept that Al Gore could build anything is absurd.
You know, the average high school student in Sunnyvale knows more about technology than Al Gore does.
Secondly, why should the government be competing against private companies?
During the presidential transition in Little Rock, the new administration brought business leaders to town.
John Scully from Apple came.
He's here looking after Silicon Valley's interests.
It becomes a sort of get-together for the establishment.
They both privately and publicly press for their interests.
The vice president and the head of AT&T had a little flurry.
Probably only harsh words back and forth during the whole couple days of the conference.
Because the president of AT&T said, no, this should be in the private sector.
I think the government should not build and or operate such networks.
I'd like to briefly clarify one point that you made.
It does seem to me that government ought to play a role in putting in place that backbone,
just as no private investor was willing to build the interstate highway system.
You didn't mean to disagree with that view when you said government shouldn't play a role, did you?
Yes, I may disagree.
Let's have a further discussion.
I was hoping we'd have one disagreement.
Scully and Silicon Valley knew they would need to work on the vice president and they would have help.
Clinton appointed one of their own, Apple executive Dave Barham.
Remember him? To be deputy secretary of commerce.
What they really get out of this is the opportunity to pick up the telephone
or in some other way communicate with somebody in the White House or in the administration somewhere
who understands their issues and is willing to make sure that they're considered in a very serious way.
And then in a private dining room of a Silicon Valley restaurant, the CEOs went to work.
While eating salmon and asparagus, they lobbied their new friends in the administration.
We had a dinner with about 25 of us and the president and the vice president.
The two of them indicated that evening that maybe they should step back from government funding
and maybe just set standards, which was very much encouraged then by the executives in the room.
And I think that evening, particularly Gore, who had been talking about it,
came back to the private sector, at least in his thinking.
I'm sure he publicly said it, but you could see his mind almost changed that night.
While Robertson may have thought Gore changed his mind, publicly,
the vice president continued to argue for government financing.
In March, Gore stressed the government's role would still be big.
Thank you very much.
But then, on December 21st, Vice President Albert Gore said this.
Because unlike the interstates, the information highways will be built, paid for, and funded principally by the private sector.
Gore delivered this speech on December 21st.
And curiously, the Federal Election Commission records that on that day,
the Democratic National Committee got a $15,000 contribution from Sprint, the telephone company,
and a $10,000 contribution from U.S. West, and a $50,000 contribution from MCI,
and a $15,000 contribution from Ninex, and the next day, another $20,000 contribution from MCI,
and $10,000 more dollars from Ninex.
Now, that could just be applause.
Thank heavens you've seen the light, and a legitimate kind of applause.
Or it could be a payoff. What do you suggest?
I think it was a reward of sorts by the companies.
I'm not saying necessarily that Clinton and Gore, I think they didn't have much choice.
I think they over-promised, frankly. But I do think it was a reward.
It was a way of saying, you did the right thing. We're very pleased.
The reason I think this is, we have looked at soft money payments over two or three years.
And usually, when you see a big chunk of money, it didn't come in one check.
We found MCI made 23 checks over a two-year period, and the average check was a few thousand dollars.
But on this day, it was 50,000. And so, there's more to it than just happened to be a coincidence.
Now, what could be going on if you suddenly decide to send $50,000 in the mail on the day of his speech?
What are you saying?
I think it's a financial version of a big wet kiss.
Why don't we get all of the council members over for a little group photo before we...
Then a new committee is formed.
They will advise the president on the superhighway, and their members have been chosen by Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce.
Companies like Bell Atlantic, MCI, people who want to build the superhighway.
Here's John Sculley.
The committee will deliver a report to the president detailing who should build what for the superhighway.
But not everyone is thrilled with who got on the committee.
Jamie Love works for Ralph Nader.
There's an assumption here that all the smart people about the development of the NII are the captains of all these big industry groups.
And I think that's really insulting to people that work in this field, that know all kinds of people that are really brilliant people,
that have all kinds of great insights to make, that are never really put on these big advisory boards and ought to be.
I mean, these aren't the best and the brightest people for the NII advisory council.
These are the biggest and the richest. It's not the same thing.
And two-thirds of the board are Democratic Party contributors.
Some on the list, AT&T gave over $1.5 million, West Publishing more than $500,000, and MCI kicked in over $425,000.
We look at it as a fundraising vehicle for the Democratic National Committee.
That is to say, people that give a lot of money to the Democratic National Committee more or less could buy a seat on the NII advisory council.
You know, I was involved in the discussions. I mean, we talked about who was going to be on it.
And it was not driven by who gave contributions.
Indeed, Jamie Love of the Nader Organization and other critics were invited to a private get-together.
It was clear right off the bat that the CEOs from all the companies were really intimate terms with the staff of the White House on everything.
I mean, it was like, good to see you. How's it going?
And there was a lot of talking in the corners about this and that and all kinds of deals going on.
The rest of us felt like we were in there like looking for autographs or something, you know,
maybe going to bring out the camera and take a few pictures and see what the inside of the White House actually looks like.
And, you know, the difference of access and intimacy is really important.
It does seem that there's a kind of barter culture in Washington.
If the government does something nice for a business, then the executives at the business say, well, we'd better give them a tip,
as if the whole thing were about money.
And sometimes it gets, well, rather frank.
Here is a memorandum distributed to big donors by the Democratic Party.
When the president saw this memo, he said, stop it.
It was circulated, however, by the Democratic National Committee.
And it says, if you give us a minimum of $100,000, here is what you get.
And it's arranged just like a menu.
You get two events with the president in Washington, D.C., two events with the vice president.
I guess that could be anywhere, though.
One dinner with high administration officials, honored guest status.
That means, I guess, you get to go to a White House dinner.
And then, now, this is an odd one, annual economic trade missions.
What could that mean?
Well, we found out.
This one here was taken in the cabinet room with the vice president and the president
with 25 CEOs on our way to China with Ron Brown a year ago, August.
Remember high-tech dealmaker Sandy Robertson.
People are pretty informally dressed because we're about to hop on an airplane for a 23-hour flight to Beijing.
The old Air Force One.
They call her Queenie.
She flew Reagan to Reykjavik, Bush to the Gulf, and she'll fly Ron Brown and top executives all over the world.
When the secretary of commerce gets off an airplane, the airplane has emblazoned on it the words
the United States of America.
And I walk down to the tarmac, accompanied by 25 or 30 chief executive officers of American companies,
large and small, that reverberates throughout that country.
And yes, it makes a difference, and yes, it has an impact, and yes, it helps create economic growth.
They call it the Brown Express, and 191 American executives have been on 14 trips.
Trade missions have been highly publicized.
He's gone overseas and, in fact, promoted U.S. business, not generally, but for those individuals
who have given those large contributions.
This is a distortion, because when you help one company, when you help one competitor in the marketplace,
by definition, you're hurting another company that's competing against that company,
and that's not a proper use of government resource.
Larry Klayman is a Washington lawyer who's been looking into these trips using the Freedom of Information Act.
He was able to get boxes of records and memos from Brown's trips, 30,000 pages in all.
You find communications from lobbyists in Washington, D.C., into Secretary Brown's office,
into the White House, saying, my client so-and-so has donated this amount of money to the Democratic National Committee.
My client so-and-so is a personal friend of President Clinton and plays a role on this particular fundraising committee.
But there was one document in particular that was very interesting.
It was written by an individual of Entergy Company, which is from Arkansas.
And in that memorandum, they quote a key aide of Secretary Brown, and this individual, Jude Kearney,
is quoted as saying, I am a political appointee, and I am here to choose those who are politically connected.
This, to me, was the foremost smoking gun in all of these documents,
which laid out a basic plan to choose corporate executives based on political connections.
All anyone has to do is look at the evidence, look who goes on the trips, check their party registration,
see whether many more of them—I would suspect that about 80 percent of the CEOs that go with me are Republicans.
So that certainly is not a criteria for their selection.
Commerce official Jude Kearney would not return our calls, but officials from Entergy stand by their memo.
But their chairman, Edwin Lutberger, told us that political contributions played no part in our decision to participate.
In all, 25 executives boarded Brown's plane for China.
This is the secretary's cabin. Look, he's got a desk.
And this, I guess, must be the TV lounge.
Now let's stroll down the aisle. Here is Edwin Lutberger's seat from Entergy.
Entergy has contributed $216,250 to the Democrats.
This is Bernard Schwartz's seat from Lural. They've given $259,775.
Seat 29 here. This is a window.
Ray Smith of Bell Atlantic, $236,625 to the Democrats.
Next up, Robert Denham of Salomon Brothers, whose firms have given $109,722.
And according to the seating chart, Lodrick Cook of ARCO sat here, and ARCO was given $646,792.
The rewards of commercial diplomacy.
Brown is the first U.S. Cabinet official to visit Beijing since May, when the U.S. stopped linking China.
Everybody seemed to be having an excellent time.
And Secretary Brown insists these trips are very good for U.S. business.
He claims to have helped close deals worth $5 billion on this one jaunt.
Well, maybe yes, maybe no, but some reports complain about favoritism in the selection process.
The Wall Street Journal and others have looked into this. If you read the articles, they have found no evidence of anything like that.
As a matter of fact, the worst thing that the article said was that a third of those who went had been contributors to the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates.
But it didn't tell you that that entire third also contributed to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, as most major company chief executive officers do.
Well, Secretary Brown is right and wrong.
In fact, we counted more than two-thirds of the CEOs on this trip as major Democratic contributors.
He is right, though, that all of them gave to Republicans as well.
One of the things that's true of these companies, and I'm sure that Secretary Brown would say this in his defense, is that these companies give to both political parties.
The issue is that they also give to the Democratic Party when they need a favor, and the Democratic Party just happens to be in power at this time.
But if the tables are turned and if the Republicans are elected, you'll find that they become big givers to the Republicans as well.
And one can ask the question, does our system need to be reformed? The answer, obviously, is yes.
In the end, having seen everything we've seen, how does one go about fixing this?
Well, the difficulty is that there's no obvious easy fix.
What I think has to happen, if everything goes well for this country, is that developments come really on three dimensions.
The first is that we change the lobbying and campaign finance laws and try to tighten them down.
Again, after all those previous tightenings.
But it won't be easy to do, as long as you're dealing with the Republican and Democratic parties,
because basically what they want to do is create loopholes and sieves and such.
So I think if the party system is starting to weaken and we're getting the rise of independents who make this an issue,
it increases the pressure on the party system to respond and not just create another flim-flam.
Now, the last ingredient is I think we have to start moving power out of Washington.
The more people, the more decisions that are made by ordinary Americans, the more you take away from Washington.
The people cannot be called up by the Washington lobbyists.
Real reform of democracy must begin by completely breaking the connection between money and politics.
Bill Bradley has announced that he's leaving the Senate, but he is still campaigning.
Here he is at Harvard. His cause? Campaign finance reform.
To start understanding what has happened to the past efforts to free politics from the grip of money.
And his idea? He wants to make it impossible for people to give money directly to politicians.
He wants a large pool of money that they all divvy up.
But there are a lot of details.
You see, one of the problems with fundamental campaign finance reform, or with campaign finance reform as we have known it,
is that it becomes so complicated that those who oppose it have no political liability,
because those who support it can't explain it convincingly enough to develop the issue.
And I think that campaign finance reform, money in politics, is a little bit like ants in your kitchen.
Either you've got to block all the holes so none of them can get in, or some of them are going to get in.
So you simply have to take the money out of politics and have fundamental, bold campaign finance reform.
Bradley's notion would make this guy's campaign illegal.
I'm here today to announce that I'm running for president of the United States.
Steve Forbes has so far spent approximately $15 million, mostly on ads.
Former Senator Gordon Humphrey.
I'm supporting Steve Forbes for president.
Steve has Ronald Reagan's conservative principles.
The Supreme Court has ruled that he has a First Amendment right to spend as much of his money as he pleases.
But some of his opponents would like to take that right away.
It seemed to me that it made no sense to say that there was a constitutional right to spend as much of your money as you wanted to,
to get yourself elected, but everybody else was limited to $1,000.
And now, when I last looked, someone was trying to buy the White House, and apparently it's for sale.
Could you buy the presidency? Do you think? Is that possible?
No, it's not possible for me to buy the presidency, but it may be possible for Steve Forbes to buy the presidency.
He's making a valiant effort, and the latest polls show him moving up very considerably.
I'm Steve Forbes. The politicians are getting nervous. The polls are getting closer.
It's all those ads. Steve can bury you in them.
The politicians will try to stop us, but they can't. We want a balanced budget.
When I was running for president a few months ago in New Hampshire, I was on a talk show, an interview show.
It was interrupted for a commercial, and there right in the middle of my important public discourse appeared Steve Forbes' commercial.
I had just been talking about the flat tax, which I've done a ton of work on, and he came on with so many
30-second soundbite commercials that the people of New Hampshire knew about Forbes' flat tax,
didn't know a thing about Arlen Spector's flat tax, and it didn't come from the cerebrum. It came from the pocketbook.
From Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Spector.
Sour grapes, maybe, but every high-profile politician now agrees that some things have got to change.
Change the limits, change the rules, change the primaries, change the ads, change enforcement.
But you've got to change something.
What about the Frank Capra solution? You get rid of all those bad people, and you put in decent, honest, intelligent, courageous politicians?
Mr. Clinton goes to Washington and ran against Washington in the election, arrives there,
and it's like iron filings hitting an electromagnet.
When Jimmy Stewart's fellow went to Washington in the 1930s, it was a different city.
You could park your convertible under the White House portico and put up the top.
You could walk into your senator's office. Case Street didn't exist except as a bunch of brownstones.
This is a totally different Washington. Sixty years later, that's a dream.
We saw it become a dream with Clinton, who ran against all this, came in there, and was just swallowed up and became a part of it.
Please applaud. I think this is—have the President here is a good thing.
And I think you were suggesting—I've never heard this proposed before—that maybe if we had sort of a blue-ribbon commission of people that really had respect and integrity,
that would look at the whole lobbying political process—
I thought you were talking about health care reform.
No.
You want to do it on lobby reform? In a heartbeat. I accept.
Mr. President?
Because otherwise we cannot pass lobby reform, our campaign finance reform, or anything else.
I would love to have a bipartisan commission on it. That's our only chance to get anything passed. I accept.
Let's shake hands right here in front of everybody. How's that? Is that a pretty good deal?
I accept.
I'll tell you, if every question is this productive. Now, can I just take one minute, Mr. President, talk about the Medicare thing?
They shook hands last June, and when they came back to Washington, they talked about a blue-ribbon commission for a while, and then they didn't.
If it's not so surprising that the politicians aren't in a rush to reform themselves, it is odd when you hear the oldest dog in the neighborhood start to worry.
I think there is a lack of confidence. I think there is a suspicion by people that their interests are being advantaged, disadvantaged by financial contributions from rich people and special interests, or narrow special interests.
And I don't think that was going to stop until we reform the campaign finance process in this country.
That's not my opinion. That's a historical fact. And you don't need a 45-minute or a 90-minute show. That is a fact.
the world of money and politics, profiles of some of the major players, excerpts from Frontline's interviews, the money charts of who gave what and who got what, and a citizen's guide to get you more involved.
And then please give us your feedback. It's all at the Internet address on your screen.
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Next time on Frontline, a shocking murder.
We had a shooting at an abortion clinic in the one thousandth block.
The victim.
My name is Shannon Lamy.
The accused gunman.
I'm not insane. I'm not incompetent.
He said, Mom, I was the thief on the cross with Jesus.
An absolute deformity of Christianity.
In the fevered climate of a holy war, two lives tragically collide.
Murder on abortion roll. Next time on Frontline.
You're the Chiquita Banana guy?
Gee, sir, without the fruit on your head, I don't even recognize you.
Why does the president know the banana guy?
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