F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue
2017-12-31 · Guest: Frank H. Buckley (Author) · 51:28
The Republic of Virtue and American Corruption
Bob Zadek interviews Frank H. Buckley about his book The Republic of Virtue, exploring the founders’ original intent to create a corruption-free government through structural safeguards. They discuss how the shift from federalism to a centralized “elective monarchy” has facilitated modern corruption, the nuances of lobbying, and the controversial case for anonymous campaign contributions to protect political speech.
Topics: Corruption, Virtue, Constitutional Convention, Lobbying, Campaign Finance, Federalism, Executive Power, George Mason, James Madison, Dark Money
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Frank H. Buckley
Introduction [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. Thanks so much for listening. As I like to do on this day in history—on this day in history, the year ended. And we’re celebrating the New Year 2018. It should be, as they say, quite interesting. We have midterm elections coming up. More about that a little bit later. It should be quite a year.
In order to become a guest on my show, there is a very high bar. What you have to do is you have to write a fabulous book. And if you do write a fabulous book, as sure as night follows day, I will be pleading with you to please share an hour of your wisdom on my show. Frank Buckley, this morning’s guest, did exactly that. Three times he has written fabulous books, and this is the third time Frank has agreed to be on our show. Frank’s newest book is The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It. Frank, welcome back to the show this morning.
Frank H. Buckley: Thanks for having me.
Defining “Virtue” in the Founding Era [01:18]
Bob Zadek: Now, Frank, what I have in my home library—I have a very interesting book. I have the first dictionary written in America. It was written by Professor Johnson. He wrote the first American dictionary. It was published back in the very late 1780s, as I recall. The reason I mention that is because the keyword in your book title, the keyword on today’s show, is “virtue.” And “virtue,” as many other words, had a much different, more important meaning in the founding era than it does today. Your book is about virtue, and when one reads the book, one gets the clear impression that your use of the word “virtue” refers somewhat longingly to the virtue that the founders cherished and found to be such an important personal quality. Tell us about the virtue in the title of your book, The Republic of Virtue, and what the thesis is and what you’re trying to help your readers understand.
Frank H. Buckley: Well, thanks. Yeah, there are a lot of virtues. There are the theological virtues, cardinal virtues—there are all kinds of virtues. But you’re right, in the 18th century, the term “virtue,” the word “virtue,” had a special meaning. It meant what was called “republican virtue,” and it meant something by way of opposition to the kind of public corruption one saw in other countries, notably England.
And when we were created as a country, when the framers got together and wrote our Constitution in 1787, they loved England in many respects. They loved the idea of British liberty. But we had fought a revolution against England, and there were a couple of things we didn’t want. We didn’t want a king, but importantly, we didn’t want British-style corruption. And boy, were they corrupt. I mean, the king was basically buying off votes in the House of Commons by giving people really bribes—I mean, positions, bribes, money, whatever. And the elections were utterly shameless affairs. And the Americans who visited England at the time were absolutely shocked at all of this. And so what they said is, “Well, we can do better. You know, we’re not going to have a king, but importantly, what we want is a sense of disinterested virtue, public-minded virtue.”
And here, virtue is referring to—not the kind of virtues which might come to mind, you know, courage and so forth. We’re talking about people who in government, public officials, prefer the public good to their private ends. And that’s what it meant to them. And so, in the Revolution, for example, the virtuous person would be a patriot who would fight for General Washington. And in Philadelphia in 1787, virtue meant the person who would prefer the public good, the good of all Americans, as opposed to local goods, putting money in your pocket or preferring your state to the country as a whole. That was what virtue meant. And in fact, if you read what the framers were doing, you get to the conclusion—I mean, it’s easy to see that what they wanted was a Constitution which would be a corruption-free covenant. And we didn’t get it.
Structural Safeguards and the Competition of Ambitions [05:40]
Bob Zadek: And of course, just if I may, while the founders had this very idealized notion of virtue of how elected officials would govern, they were not naive. And that must be emphasized. As Adams, Madison famously mentioned, “If men were angels, we wouldn’t need laws.” They knew that men were far from angels. So while one would hope that public officials would govern with virtue, the founders did not rely upon that as a protection, but they built in, as your book explains, they built in safeguards to make sure that since men were not angels, they were men, they would be controlled by the structure of government. At least that was the goal in 1787.
Frank H. Buckley: That’s exactly right. And the keywords that you used were “structure of government.” I mean, there are two ways of thinking about how to promote public virtue, republican virtue in that sense. One is, you know, just make laws, anti-corruption laws. So we have laws about bribery and the like. But the other way of thinking about virtue, the way you mentioned, is, well, you know, if we’re all ordinary humans, not angels, then let’s instead of just having anti-corruption crimes, let’s think about the structure of government. And that’s what the Constitution was all about. Again and again in the notes of the convention, they come to a full stop. It looks like everybody’s about to go home. It looks like we’re going to break up. We may not have one country. Some of us may go back and live under the British again. Anything is possible. I mean, to think that it had to end up as it did, that’s just foolish. We could have ended up three different countries or nothing like a country at all. And when it came to the point where we were about to break up, it was the fear of corruption that brought people together.
And so they came up with a structure of government that they thought would work. And the structure would be one in which we wouldn’t give absolute power to anybody. We’d have the famous set of checks and balances where everybody would kind of have to get together to compromise on deals, on legislation, on appointments. And that, it was thought, would prevent any one person from being wholly corrupt.
Bob Zadek: That was Madison. Madison looked upon the structure as being the competition of ambitions. If each—given that men were inherently ambitious, most were—if Madison could build a government where ambition would crash into ambition, they would in some way neutralize each other and not let one governing institution’s ambition crowd out the others. That was the theory. It didn’t work, Frank, as you explain in your book, but that was Madison’s playing ambition against ambition to neutralize any threat to the public.
Frank H. Buckley: That’s exactly right. And it took a while for Madison to get there. He didn’t start out like that. Madison started out with a very different idea of government, something more like parliamentary government, where he thought, “Well, the way we’ll cure corruption is we’ll filter virtue.” In other words, you’ll have the people electing the House of Representatives, and the House will elect the Senate, and the House and the Senate together will elect the President. And that way, he said basically, the cream would rise to the top.
And what put a stop to that was the Connecticut Compromise, where the senators would be appointed by state legislatures or by means determined by state legislatures. And Madison, who was a nationalist, realized that the states would be powerful at the very heart of the federal government. And the guy who kind of got there first was actually Gouverneur Morris. He said, you know, “Your idea of filtration was all very well, but now filtration is going to weaken the national government because the states will be represented in the Senate.” And when that happened, Morris said, “Right, let’s have a popularly elected president.” And that was on the morning of July 17, 1787, the most important date in American history by my reckoning, because on that morning, Madison wanted to lead a walkout from the convention. And Morris brought him around and said, “No, no, no, we can do this better. We can have a strong national government. We’ll have an elected president.” It took Madison two days to come around to that, but you’re right, when he did, eventually he provided the argument that this is going to cure corruption.
George Mason and the “Elective Monarchy” [11:05]
Bob Zadek: So the founders did all they could, and they were building a government, it should be mentioned, that never existed on earth. I often equate that to what was happening in New Mexico at the end of World War II, when Teller and the others were building the atomic bomb. They sat there with their calculations saying to themselves, I suppose, “Well, this should work, but gulp, let’s see if it actually does.” And they tested it without having any idea what was going to happen until the test happened. Well, the founders, with perhaps less immediate drama, did the same thing. They sat and looked at what they had finished. They must have said to each other, “Well, this should work, or this might work, but gulp, we have to try.”
And here we are 200-plus years later, still discovering that, well, maybe it doesn’t work, or maybe it does work, or maybe it has to be fixed a bit. So that’s my own personal analogy to what must have been going on in the closed windows of Philadelphia in 1787 as the founders structured a constitution and structured a government. Now, during that deliberation, Frank, as you point out in your book, perhaps the most prescient of the founding generation, of the founders, was my favorite—one of my favorite founders and the namesake of the university in which you teach law, and that was, of course, George Mason. George Mason, who helped participate in the writing of the Constitution, would not sign it. And Frank, you point out this wonderful George Mason quote, if I can read it, because he would not sign. He was concerned how prescient he was to Obama’s pen and phone when George Mason said in 1787, “We are not indeed constituting a British government, but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one.” Oh my goodness, how smart he was at the time and how much he predicted Obama’s pen and his phone. And I’ll also mention, Frank, if you don’t mind, a shameless plug, the last time—two times ago when you were on my show, you had just written The Once and Future King, when you observed, since you were born in Canada and understood the parliamentary system, you observed that America has built itself a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one. And you pointed out then on my show, available on iTunes, you pointed out that our American presidency has so much more power than any king in history ever fantasized about having. So here we are with an elective king, and that is, as your book points out, the source of much of the corruption we’re suffering today.
Frank H. Buckley: Well, it’s—by the way, when you refer to George Mason, it’s entirely appropriate to say “the never-much-to-be-praised George Mason.” That’s right. I teach at Mason here in Northern Virginia. A couple of things about that: the presidential form of government is particularly dangerous in other countries. In other words, we’ve made a go of it. It’s not perfect, but we’ve made a go of it. But that’s because we’re Americans, not because of the presidential form of government, because when you look at other countries that have copied our Constitution, boy, those presidents have turned into presidents for life pretty often. And it hasn’t quite happened with us. I mean, with Obama, we began to worry about the growth of the executive branch, and people worried about it indeed under W as well. I think we’re finding under Trump that he hasn’t abused his power in that way. What he’s done is he’s erased a bunch of Obama’s executive orders of dubious constitutionality. And that’s a return to normalcy rather than an extension of the presidential prerogative.
On the subject of monarchy, by the way, there was a story yesterday: the Romanians are going to have a referendum as to whether or not they want a monarchy. So, you know, it doesn’t go away, the idea of monarchy. In 1830, Belgium won its independence. This is 50 years after the American Revolution and our Constitution. In 1830, Belgium won its independence, and the first thing they said is, “Okay, we have to have a king.” And they invited, you know, all these princelings from all over to apply, and one of them, King Leopold I from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, applied and he got it. He became King Leopold I of the Belgians.
Gordon Wood, I think the best American historian of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century, said, “Well, we won’t understand American history of the period unless we understand the expectation people had that we’d end up as a monarchy. It wouldn’t be a British monarchy; we might borrow a king from somebody else.” But then in 1787, when the delegates were in Philadelphia, who was there on the dais but George Washington, the indispensable man? And it was clear that Washington didn’t want to be a king, and he didn’t want a monarchy. And so, you’re right, they were trying to do something that had never been done before. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, because every one of those colonies had a form of quasi-self-government in their own colonies. I mean, Virginia had its royal governor and its assembly and so on. But they had never had a country that big. And one of the debates was, “Okay, it kind of worked locally, but for a country as big as America will be, with 13 colonies becoming one country, are we too big for that? You know, do we need a king or some greater source of power in the national government?” That was a big part of the debate: national versus federalism. And that was one reason also why George Mason dropped out. He thought we’d have something like a monarch at the head, and he thought that the power would all centralize in Washington. And he was right; it just took us 200 years to get there.
Corruption and the Centralization of Power [18:34]
Bob Zadek: Now, in your—of course, Madison believed that we could have a big republic because he felt that the factions in a big country would all neutralize each other. There would not be a national party; there would simply be factions forming around a specific issue, putting together coalitions, and they would neutralize each other, diluting power. And power was, of course, the one noun that the founders feared more than anything else. Any accumulation of power was to be feared, and the founders did all they could to eliminate any accumulation of power. The structure of our country was designed to do that. It probably failed, but that was the goal.
Now, Frank, in your book, you mention many examples of the corruption that you would hope could be dealt with in the last phrase in your subtitle, “what we can do about it.” So give us just some of the examples of the type of corruption that disturbs you so much that caused you to write this book.
Frank H. Buckley: Well, I’ll give you a couple of examples. I mean, first of all, the title of my book, The Republic of Virtue, is somewhat ironic in that I don’t think what you’d want is a corruption-free government. The optimal level of corruption is not zero. Live with it, right? I mean, if you want a totally corruption-free government, you’re talking about Robespierre cutting off people’s heads. So, you know, it’s more a question of what as a matter of prudence would get us in the right direction.
And one thing, for example, is a better sense of federalism. Now, people, when I talk about this, people will say, “Wait a minute, you’re saying we’re corrupt? I mean, I don’t get it. I mean, where are you coming from?” And I say, “Well, you ever heard of this place called Louisiana? You ever heard of this place called Illinois? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I see where you’re coming from.” So if you’re in a corrupt state like Louisiana, you’re going to pay for it. I mean, with corruption, you get inefficient government, wasteful government, and you get a decline in wealth. I mean, you’re paying for the crime of corruption through poverty. So what do you do about it? Well, you move, right? I mean, we all have locational choices. We all end up often in places we didn’t grow up in, and we would tend to move to places that are less corrupt. And so in Louisiana, you can go across the state border to Texas.
But what happens when all of the power is centralized or most of the power is centralized in Washington? Well, you can’t escape federal corruption. Right? So, I’m looking across the river right now at DC, across the Potomac, and I’m looking at the greatest concentration of influence and patronage that’s ever been seen in the world, centered on K Street with the lobbyists and Congress. And to the extent that we’re talking about federal-level corruption, you don’t escape that by moving across state borders. So the one thing that’s happened has been the accumulation of power in Washington, the decline of federalism, and that has not been healthy in terms of corruption. That’s one thing right there.
Lobbying: Education vs. Influence [22:20]
Bob Zadek: Now, also it should be pointed out that, not in defense of lobbyists, but lobbyists are hired representatives. They’re employed by interest groups, whether they are trade associations, collections of individuals, businesses, or the like. And their job, their only job, is to persuade elected officials to do something that will benefit their clientele. So lobbyists—and also to educate the legislature. Now, education of the legislature is not a bad thing per se; in fact, it’s necessary. So what is there about the occupation of lobbying, of petitioning the government, of educating the government—what is there about that that rises to the level in your book and in your mind of corruption? You’ll have one minute to think about that really challenging question. We’re going to take a one-minute break. We’ll be right back. This is Bob Zadek speaking with Frank Buckley. We are discussing The Republic of Virtue, Frank’s new book. We’ll be back in one really short minute to discuss lobbying.
[Commercial Break]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. Happily welcoming back to the show Frank Buckley. Frank has written The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It. Frank, before the break, you were complaining—I guess that’s not too strong a word—about the influence of lobbyists on our democracy and how that is a symptom of the corruption which your book addresses. Now, lobbyists seem to be carrying on a somewhat benign, if not important, activity, which is educating the legislature about the arcane businesses of their clients, information the elected officials would otherwise not have. Doesn’t that help them, the legislature, do a better job? So what’s your problem with lobbyists, and why is carrying on that occupation a form of corruption?
Frank H. Buckley: Great question. First off, you’re absolutely right to start to talk about the good things done by lobbyists. And let’s talk for a moment about who these guys are. I mean, most of them, the great majority, represent industry groups. But some of them are just representing public interest groups generally—for example, the Sierra Club has lobbyists, the NAACP has lobbyists, the National Rifle Association has lobbyists. And they’ve got an ideological agenda, and what they’re doing is they’re exercising their First Amendment right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. That is not merely neutral; it is a positively good thing. And it’s a positively good thing precisely because congressmen come to town not exactly well-educated, in many cases deeply ignorant about what the heck’s going on. They need to be told what’s happening, and government is so complicated that they need to be told, “Well, you know, there is this 1,000-page bill coming up, and we want you to pay attention to this little rider here.” Not merely is that neutral, as I say, it’s a positive good.
But here is where it oversteps the line. It oversteps the line when lobbyists can essentially purchase influence with congressmen by giving gifts to them. And the classic example of that, now outlawed, was the golf trips that Jack Abramoff organized for his congressional friends 10-odd years ago. They were pricey junkets. And you know, when you do that, golly, there’s a sense of obligation that comes with that. And those kinds of direct gifts were outlawed.
But there are a lot of things that remain, I think, to be proscribed and which could be constitutionally. For one thing, while lobbyists can’t put money in a congressman’s pocket, what a lobbyist can do is contribute to a political campaign. Indeed, since corporations are prohibited from contributing to congressmen, the corporation essentially can do it using the lobbyist as a conduit. And you can do things as a lobbyist like organize receptions and meet-and-greets and the apparatus of campaigning can be basically run through a lobbyist’s office. And that, I think, properly could be curtailed. I see nothing wrong with that. I think that’d be a good thing. Fine, let them be relegated to their information provision business, but not to the special sweetheart gifts business. Because that’s like buying influence.
Bob Zadek: You’re exactly right. It has been much written about how the corrupting influence of influence buyers, the lobbyists. But can you trace that back? Is there a direct line or a dotted line to something the founders did wrong, should have done better, or a structural defect that could be corrected? What—since the founders were very wise and did their very best to build a minimum corruption, not corruption-free, but minimum corruptible government—what happened between the brilliance of the founders and today that caused that gaping hole in our minimum corruption government they designed?
Frank H. Buckley: Well, two things. Number one, technology. Number two, size of government. As wise as the framers were, they were not omniscient. They were not in 1787 aware of the transformation of communications, information that happened thereafter. I mean, the roads of America at that time were worse than the Roman roads of 2,000 years before. So the Federalist Papers, for example, never really got outside of New York during the ratification debate. I mean, that’s how bad communication was.
Bob Zadek: Well, remember, Frank, the Federalist Papers were written to persuade New York to ratify. So nobody cared very much that people in other colonies read the Federalist Papers. The audience was very specific.
Frank H. Buckley: The audience was specific, but people tend to think that everybody must have read them, and of course they didn’t. But the thing is, with the changes in technology, you’ve got the possibility of a national candidate. You’ve got the possibility of a Trump or Obama who could campaign nationally, which is not something that they ever thought would happen after George Washington. So you had a concentration of power in the executive branch. You also had a concentration of power in Washington with the expansion of the federal government, particularly after Woodrow Wilson and FDR. What happens then is the stakes as to lobbying have incredibly changed. Right? I mean, to get a national interest group, a national industry group, for example, it’s not hard. It’s not any harder to create an American-level group than a Delaware group. Okay? And when that happens, you know, the cost of producing such a group is much smaller than it was back when, but the payoff is huge because of the expansion of the federal government, which means that the lobbyists are centered over on K Street, right, rather than over in Delaware.
Bob Zadek: The phrase I would use, Frank, would be “leverage”—a financial term, but it applies to politics. You have political leverage. You get a big bang for the buck if all you have to do is rent one office suite on K Street rather than 50 office suites on the state equivalent of K Streets around the country. So it sure makes buying influence effective and cheap when you only have to have one-stop shopping. So you’re exactly right that if you disperse the power away from Washington, you automatically get as this wonderful byproduct an immediate decrease in corruption buying votes because it becomes so gosh-darn expensive. You have to buy votes in 50 places, which means it becomes really expensive and therefore there’s no concentration of influence.
Frank H. Buckley: You know, and sometimes people say, “You know, you’re railing against corruption, but why don’t we just shrink the size of the federal government?” And my answer is, “Yeah, okay, what’s a ruck? You know, yeah, we can do that and that’ll take care of everything, but you know, I’m not going to hold my breath.” So if we’re stuck with the concentration of power that we have, by virtue of technology, much as we’d like to shrink the size of a state—and it’s something that’s ongoing right now under Trump as we’re talking—yet it’s not going to happen overnight. So it makes sense to talk about curbing corruption.
And here’s another way we can do it. Right now, there’s nothing wrong with a congressman before he retires having a conversation with a lobbying firm about whether he might be employed by them. Now, that sort of thing will get you charged with bribery in federal courts if you try it with a judge. It’s one reason why some trial lawyers in Mississippi ended up in jail, right? They approached judges with cases before them and said, “You know, maybe you’d want to take a position of counsel with my firm.” And that was a bribe. Okay? But consider how similar that is to what happens where a congressman gets a call from a lobbying firm where the congressman expects to take a job with that firm on retirement, and the lobbying firm says, “You know, we’d like to have this little thing put into a bill,” and your answer as a congressman is apt to be, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full.” Which is why one ex-congressman said that Congress is a farm team for K Street. In other words, when you retire—and this is what happens to about half our congressmen—when you retire, you can take a job on K Street and double, triple, quadruple, or by 10 times increase your salary. That’s the payoff. And so much of Washington, by the way, is exactly like that. I mean, not just congressmen, but executive branch people, all of that. I mean, Trump came to town and said, “Look, my executive branch people, for five years after you leave office, you can’t work as a lobbyist.” I mean, that’s a good start. I’d make it permanent.
Campaign Finance and the Case for Anonymity [35:33]
Bob Zadek: Now, you also have mentioned in your book that, somewhat counterintuitively, campaign finance laws were designed to minimize the—and the phrase, of course, we all have heard ad nauseam is—the “effect of money on politics,” as if you can somehow remove the effect of money, which you cannot. But you have pointed out in your book in a very clear way the adverse effect of campaign finance laws on the electoral process as another glaring example of corruption.
Frank H. Buckley: Yeah, in fact, here’s where I depart from most of the people who write about the subject. Most people will say, “Oh, corruption is terrible, and the framers didn’t want corruption, and therefore, let’s have vastly strengthened campaign finance laws.” That’s where somebody like Liz Warren is coming from. And my response is, “Well, you know, we can always make things worse.” And the call to eliminate money in politics is also a call to eliminate competition in politics. And it’s competition which produces clean government, not the absence thereof. So if you’re in office and you don’t feel being displaced by some guy running against you, boy, you can do whatever the heck you want. It’s competition which produces cleaner government. And for competition, what you need is money.
And indeed, not merely did I like money in politics, but I even like dark money. In other words, I thought that all that screaming about dark money, which is to say money where the identity of the giver is hidden—people say that’s a bad thing. I say it’s a great thing. I mean, it’s when you don’t know when your left arm doesn’t know what your right arm is giving that you have least to fear about corruption. Right? I mean, where you get pay-for-play is where the donee knows the identity of the donor, where the congressman knows who the moneybags is. But if it’s all anonymous, then you won’t know.
I mean, at this point in our laws, there is a way of giving money anonymously under one provision of a tax code, and that drives liberals nuts. By the way, that’s your first tip-off. When this is partisan, right, it’s not about getting money out of politics; it’s about getting Republican money out of politics. But frankly, Hillary outspent Trump three to two in the last election, and in the Alabama election recently, Roy Moore was outspent ten to one. So, you know, that’s what happens, and that came from out-of-state money, by the way, mostly. But that’s okay. I mean, money will go usually ideologically to one candidate or another, and that helps produce competition, which may uncover idiots or rogues, and all that’s a good thing.
Moreover, and here’s my kicker: we really need anonymous giving, i.e., dark money, to protect people who give to unpopular causes. And here, what I’m thinking of is the people who supported the proposition in California about same-sex marriage. The famous example was Brendan Eich, who lost his job when it was revealed that he gave 100 bucks to the campaign. So right now, when you give money to a campaign and you’re outed or doxxed—your identity is revealed—you’re at the mercy of an internet mob. And here in the District, for example, there is a website—the website is national or international, but the website is, I think, I forget what it’s called, and I don’t want to give it away—but it reveals the names and addresses of all the people who donated to Trump in the District, plus their wives, plus their kids, plus where they live, plus where they go jogging. And it kind of invites their members to go jogging along with them. They say, “Here’s where she goes, I bet we could outrun her.” So, you know, and of course they say, “Of course we’re not advocating violence.” Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth.
Bob Zadek: You know, Frank, it’s interesting. I have always advocated and wished for a law that prohibited any candidate to know who contributed to his or her campaign. I would prefer mandatory anonymity between the giver and the recipient of campaign dollars. And I draw the analogy to: if we have secret ballots—and by the way, we didn’t always have secret ballots, a relatively new invention—but since we have and embrace secret ballots, that is how you feel about a candidate is not for the public to know, we ought to have mandatory secrecy in campaign contributions, eliminating a great deal of any quid pro quo because the elected official will never know the quid to give a quo to. So I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s not been discussed a great deal. I think it would overwhelmingly reduce the corruption you discuss in your book.
Structural Solutions and the “Chinese Wall” [42:07]
Bob Zadek: Now, Frank, in your book, what would be your wishlist for how to move towards—we can’t achieve, but to move towards—the virtue that the founders so dearly embraced? What would be the three or four items you would want that you consider to be somewhat achievable to change how civic life in America exists today?
Frank H. Buckley: I’m glad you said the word “achievable,” because my basic point in all of this is we’re not going to get to Nirvana, we’re not going to get to the Promised Land. And the guys who tell us that we can get there are often guys who have their own private agenda, which is driving out conservative money or libertarian money out of politics. So it’s more a matter of small corrections here and there.
But there are a number of things. The Supreme Court, for example, has absolved the former governor of Virginia of corruption, bribery, when it would have been very easy, I think, on the evidence to have found that he in fact had been corrupt. The Supreme Court has taken a position that ordinary giving of money to a candidate or giving of presents privately to a candidate and then getting some promise of return—or not a promise of return, but some mild efforts to help the donor—that’s okay. I think we could have a tougher anti-bribery law than that which has been given to us by the Supreme Court. But we’re stuck with that.
We’re stuck with no limits on expenditures by candidates. That’s, I think, a good thing. That’s the Supreme Court’s ruling. That meant that a person like Donald Trump could come from basically nowhere, Bernie Sanders could come from nowhere. That’s good for competition. The Supreme Court has said we can have limits on contributions. Bad idea. I’d get rid of that. And you know why? Because right now our campaign finance laws, which limit contributions to a candidate, they’re a net that has this curious feature: the big fish swim through, the small fish get caught. So if you’re a big fish and you’ve got a lawyer at your side, you know how to give money and a lot of money to the candidate. But it’s the small guy who doesn’t have a lawyer by his side who gets caught. It’d be better just to get rid of all of that.
And as I say with respect to dark money, I totally agree with you. It’s really, as you say, like secret ballots. You go to vote, nobody knows how I voted. Just me. That’s how it should be with respect to campaign contributions. You do that, if it’s totally dark money, then you don’t have pay-for-play. That takes care of the corruption angle. And then as I say, I’d like to see a Chinese Wall between K Street and Congress. You work in Congress, you don’t go to K Street, you don’t get a job as a lobbyist thereafter. Those are three things right there that I think would help make a difference. It’s not the Promised Land, it’s competition.
Closing Remarks [44:58]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’ve been speaking with Frank Buckley. Frank has written The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It. We’ll be back in one short minute to finish up with Frank. Please stay tuned. There’s an interesting question to follow.
[Commercial Break]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I welcome your comments on today’s show. Use the Bob Zadek Show Facebook page, email to bob@bobzadek.com, or tweet to @rzadek. A podcast of all shows is available on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud.
Now that Trump’s tax bill has been signed into law, we’re awash in poll results. 89% of Democrats and 70% of independents oppose the bill. Most expressing an opinion can only guess the effect on their own taxes. No one polled has actually read the bill. No one polled could possibly have an informed opinion. The opinions were based on the media which the subject relied upon, and the polls only reflect which media was more influential, not the contents of the actual bill. Since professional economists disagree on the law’s effect on the economy, the position of the media is solely a reflection on which economist the media chose to rely upon. The midterm elections will be won or lost based in great part on the perception of this major legislation. Those votes will be as lacking in data as the opinions are right now. Most votes and political opinions are based on tribal loyalty, group identification, and superstition, not information. The selection of cell phone plans is more data-driven than our voting. How can democracy survive?
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m speaking with Frank Buckley. Frank has written The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It. Now, Frank, we have only a minute or two left, but a question I have been dying to ask you. Your book focuses on basically economic corruption. You don’t like the idea that elected officials can be influenced and their voting affected by money. But do you feel that there is another form of corruption? What if an elected official votes, if you will, the “wrong” way based upon personal bias, based upon some experience that elected official has had growing up or in their earlier years, based upon life experiences? Don’t you care more about whether the ultimate vote was good for the country rather than the motivation behind that vote?
Frank H. Buckley: Not really, because we all have those motivations and we have a remedy for them, and they can be good or bad. They might be a motivation derived from an incident with a religious leader when one was eight years of age that made an impression on one which was overall very, very good. So those—we all have those kinds of private biases. They may be good or bad, and the remedy for the bad ones is vote the guy out. That’s the best I think you can do with that. I don’t have a problem with that.
Bob Zadek: Isn’t the same remedy available for corruption?
Frank H. Buckley: Well, there is that remedy available for corruption, but what I in the case of corruption, what I wanted to talk about was how the campaign itself, the election itself, is affected by things which in themselves might be tainted by corruption. For example, money given by a lobbyist. I didn’t get into it, but I also in the book talk about bundlers who end up as ambassadors here, there, or elsewhere and have absolutely nothing going for them apart from the fact they raised some money. That’s kind of an embarrassment to America. But you know, that’s how we finance our election campaigns. We’re essentially selling off our embassies to big donors, and they’re frequently idiots. So there’s something special about money because money doesn’t correlate with goodness so much as, you know, those conversations you had with a religious leader when you were eight years of age.
Bob Zadek: Frank, what is your next book so I can start scheduling you to be on the show? What is your next book and what is the publication date?
Frank H. Buckley: It’s called The Republican Workers Party. It’s about the ideas behind Trump. It’s coming out in October of 2018, just before the congressional election. And I’m talking about why the old Republican Party died and why it deserved to die.
Bob Zadek: There’s been a lot written about the transformation of the Republican Party. We look forward to reading your book. Frank, thank you so much for giving us your wisdom this hour. We wish you success in the publication of your book. As soon as your new book is published, we’d be happy to welcome you back on the show. I’ll make the arrangements right now. We look forward to your book. Now, Frank, in a word—go ahead, Frank.
Frank H. Buckley: I worked on the Trump campaign, so I kind of have an insight. But Bob, I’d be delighted to be back, and let me wish you a Happy New Year.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot. Thanks once again for giving us an hour of your wisdom this Sunday morning, this New Year’s Eve day. And thanks to all my friends out there in Sacramento, the Bay Area, Seattle, Portland, and all the other outlets of my show. I’ll be back next Sunday, sure as anything, for another hour of live libertarian thought. Thank you so much. Have a nice Sunday.