Some who have been reading Henry Clay: The Essential American have asked me what Clay would think of the current operations of government and the nature of modern political behavior. There is, after all, a sense that Clay's advocacy of greater government involvement in Americans' everyday lives would amount to a pleasant realization of his vision in the events of our time. Yet, I don't think he would be pleased at all.
Americans have gradually been enveloped by all-encompassing government, and aside from having to pay for it with higher taxes, we all have to cope with its increasingly complex regulatory web. Yet, some have found a way to deal with it, quite literally, through "rent seeking," the effort to acquire favored treatment under aggressive government interventions. The largest Wall Street firms give a disproportionate amount of their financial support to the Democrat Party because they are purchasing insurance from the outfit that is most likely to regulate them. In part, they hope that they can appease the government beast by feeding it, and the results are corrosive on many levels. For instance, it creates the impression that what is wrong with the political process is an ill that can be cured by unconstitutional panaceas such as the odious campaign finance reform law, which isn't a "reform" at all, but is a blatant assault on the First Amendment. Joe Six-Pack and Judy Housewife have all sorts of impediments placed on their financial participation in politics (a form of speech, if it is anything), but the really large players like Goldman-Sachs will always find a way to get the check into the right hands.
But most important, rent seekers are also buying preferential treatment in a highly regulated economy. That practice, not the purchase of negative campaign ads or the creation of grass roots funded organizations for particular candidates, has turned campaigns for elective office into vast fundraising endeavors. Presidential elections and congressional contests now run on budgets that would make many sovereign nations feel flush. Why is this? It's simply because the money is there - it's there from corporate donors but also from private citizens who feel that in the parlance of our times they have "a dog in the hunt." The hunt for preserving the Constitution, protecting our liberties, promoting the general welfare, ensuring the domestic tranquility? Well, no; the smart money sees it as the hunt for a place at the trough, a favored spot in this or that government entitlement, a hedged bet that this candidate and party will favor a pet project or preserve a privileged position. Elected officials may go to state capitals and Washington, D.C., as virtuous as the first inhabitants of Eden, but billions of dollars have established legions of rent seekers (they are called lobbyists) at the loci of governmental power because that power is real, growing, and ultimately purchasable. Like Adam and Eve, most of the officeholders don't stand a chance. "How do you like them apples?" becomes an entirely different type of question in those places.
How then do you remove undue corporate influence in elections and how do you end apparently irresistible seductions to corruption for elected officials? Simple: reduce the power and reach of government. Nobody will seek to buy what does not exist and therefore cannot be sold. The government could then turn its attention to its real priorities, such as preventing people from blowing us up.
The Framers crafted a wise design to keep the government out of our faces if not altogether out of our pocketbooks. Everyone needs to remember what the Founding generation knew: that the government can only help one person by imposing some measure of hardship on another. Government transfers funds. It does not create wealth. Those who want the government to enrich them have conceded that they do not care if government impoverishes someone else. From that perspective, a vote ceases to be an expression of civic preference and becomes instead a cudgel with which to mug your neighbor. It's not what the Founders had in mind. It is not what Henry Clay wanted. It is unfortunately what we've got.
Posted May 11, 2010