James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers that "the aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, to obtain for rulers men who possess the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

How successful have we been in pursuing the second of Madison's aims over the past half-century? In the field suggested by the phrase "ethics in government," we seem to me to have made remarkable progress in writing laws and regulations well designed to set high ethical standards for members of Congress and officers and employees in the executive branch. The progress began with Sen. Paul Douglas' work as chairman of a special subcommittee. The subcommittee produced one of the first comprehensive reports — the first in the Senate — on ethical abuses in government. In 1958, Congress enacted a broad and loosely worded Code of Ethics for Government Service. Watergate gave new impetus to the movement. New codes were adopted by the Senate and House in 1977, and a year later Congress enacted the Ethics in Government Act.

The Act, strengthened by amendments, supplies one of the foundation stones for assuring ethics in government:

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We have made good progress in writing rules to keep our rulers virtuous in pursuit of the common good.

the individual detailed periodic financial reports required of the president and every officer in the executive branch, and every employee compensated at or above the senior level, and also of senators and representatives in Congress and senior congressional staff. The publicity, like sunlight, both deters and corrects. In addition, the reports furnish a wealth of information for the press, reform groups and the public concerning practices tolerated by the law and codes of ethics but damaging to the public good.

We have made good progress in stopping the flow of money from private interests with axes to grind directly into the personal bank accounts of senior government employees and elected and appointed officials. I refer to once widely accepted practices such as the large earnings for little work done outside one's government position, the honoraria paid in return for a short speech, or perhaps attendance at a meeting of some trade association or other organization in the private sector. Gifts, transportation, travel expenses, a weekend or perhaps a week at a travel resort in return for a brief appearance at a convention fall in the same category.

Sen. Douglas explained the cost of such practices much more clearly than I can express it: "Throughout this whole process, the official will claim — and may indeed believe — that there is no causal connection between the favors he has received and the decisions which he makes. He will assert that the favors were given and received on the basis of pure friendship unsullied by worldly considerations. He will claim that the decisions, on the other hand, will have been made on the basis of the justice and equity of the particular case." But, Sen. Douglas emphasized, "What happens is a gradual shifting of a man's loyalties from the community to those who have been doing him favors. His final decisions are, therefore, made in response to his private friendships and loyalties rather than to the public good."

Outside earnings have been sharply limited and the receipt of honoraria has been forbidden throughout the government. The Senate put the capstone on such legislation this summer by modifying its rules to forbid acceptance of travel expenses and of any but the most trifling entertainment.

We have also made considerable progress in dealing with the evils of "the revolving door" through which officials, including members of Congress, regularly left government office only to walk back in to Congress, or their former department or agency, to use the friendships, influence and inside information acquired in government service as lobbyists for special interests. Senior personnel in the executive branch, for example, are now barred for one year from participating in any matter that was under their authority within a year prior to leaving the government. Former members of Congress are barred from lobbying any present member of either house or any congressional staff for one year after leaving office. Similar but somewhat narrower limitations are laid upon other employees in both branches.

The measures are not a full remedy for the abuse of the "revolving door." There continues to be serious criticism of the practice of leaving Congress or high executive office and later becoming a lobbyist for a foreign government. Much more important in my opinion, the one-year ban on lobbying is far too short either to eliminate the advantage of "inside information" or to ensure that the individual lobbied will not make his decisions "in response to his private friendships and loyalties rather than to the public good."

Taking all these reforms as a group, I think that we are thoroughly warranted in saying that, even though there is room for improvement, within the field conventionally denominated "ethics in government," we have made good progress in writing rules to keep our rulers virtuous in pursuit of the common good.

The common good

Have we succeeded in Madison's aim to keep those chosen to govern virtuous in pursuit of the common good?

Surely, the answer is a resounding "no." A 1992 Gordon S. Black poll found that 75 percent of the registered likely voters agreed that "Congress is largely owned by special interest groups," while 85 percent agreed that "special interest money buys the loyalty of candidates." The 1994 elections resulted in a smashing defeat of the Democratic incumbents. The vote was a rejection of the performance of government and not just of the party in power.

What is to blame? Surely the central cause of the current overwhelming public distrust of government, and of actual subordination of the common good to special interests, is the present system of campaign finance.

A few figures should be sufficient to recall the still swelling torrent of campaign money. In less than 20 years, spending in Senate races has increased more than five-fold. The average expenditure for a Senate winner was $610,026 in 1976, $4.5 million in 1994 — a seven-fold increase. In order to acquire $4.5 million for a campaign, a senator must raise $14,423 a week each and every week of his six-year term. In 1976, the average spent by successful candidates for the House was $87,280. In 1994, it was $530,031 — more than a six-fold increase. In 1994, 45 House candidates spent more than $1 million apiece.

Special interest PAC contributions have become a dominant force in financing congressional campaigns, and consequently in congressional decision-making. In 1994, 45 percent of the contributions of incumbent House candidates came from PACs. On the average, an incumbent Senate candidate raised $1.1 million from PACs in the 1994 election cycle. The 1994 elections brought many new members to the Senate and the House, a switch to Republican control and

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sweeping promises of reform; but the torrent of PAC money is still increasing. The 85 freshman members of the House raised just about $5 million in PAC contributions during the first six months of 1995, 45 percent of their 1994 campaign contributions. Their total PAC contributions were 25 percent higher than those of their predecessors in the corresponding first six months of 1993.

Nearly all PACs are affiliated with organizations that are concerned with government decisions and therefore maintain ongoing lobbying. And, while the law limits to $10,000 the amount any one PAC can contribute to any one member of Congress in a full election cycle, we must remember that large numbers of PACs will often be pressing the same issue.

The medical industry PACs invested $45 million in campaign contributions in the decade 1983-1993. Similarly, in the decade ending this spring, communications industry PACs contributed in excess of $30 million, and communications interests and their executives added $8.6 million in "soft money" given to the Democratic and Republican national committees.

The costs of this system of campaign finance are enormous. Outcomes are bound to have been affected by the tens of millions of dollars invested by the medical and communications interests while Congress was working on basic legislation affecting them.

Efforts to analyze the effect of special interest contributions upon key votes point to the same conclusion. Consider the dairy subsidy. Three huge dairy cooperatives had been showering political contributions upon members of Congress. Of those who had received more than $30,000, all voted for the subsidy at the high level. Of those who received from $20,000 to $30,000, 97 percent chose the high level; from $10,000 to $20,000, 81 percent. On the other hand, of those members of Congress who received from $1 to $2,500, only 33 percent voted for the higher subsidy, along with 23 percent of those who received no dairy industry money. The higher subsidy carried the day at a cost of $1 billion to the taxpayers. The effect of the special interest money seems plain whether one infers that it bought votes in Congress or that it made the difference in congressional elections in an age when the key factor is usually ability to outspend one's opponent in buying skilled campaign managers, pollsters, "packagers" and television spots.

The defenders of large campaign contributions often acknowledge that the contributions buy "access" to senators and representatives but deny that they buy votes. But buying and selling access itself wreaks enormous damage to the public good. No one would tolerate a legal system in which the judge heard only the evidence and arguments of one side. Why should Congress be different?

The second cost of the present system of campaign finance is the shrinking and ultimate loss of faith in democratic self-government. When government appears to have lost concern for the common good, men and women drop out of the political process; they take no interest and cease to vote. Only 55.2 percent of the eligible population voted in 1992, the year of the last presidential election; only 39 percent in 1994.

Third among the costs, and first in importance, I would list the loss of faith in a common good — the "common good" of which Madison wrote when he said that one aim of every political constitution should be to keep those elected virtuous in pursuit of the "common good." Even if the skeptics are right in saying that, in a self-governing democracy, elections and the halls of Congress are no more than the places where selfish groups strike an equilibrium of self-interests, still it is a disastrous step back to have money become the sole determinant where the balance is struck.

The special interests

To restore confidence in representative government by turning our elected governors' focus away from special interests and back to the common good, we need first to reform the system of campaign finance. Solid reform would comprise five elements.

First, reform must provide viable candidates with substantial public campaign finance resources, provided that they agree to reasonable spending limits. I couple the two because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that, although Congress violates the First Amendment by setting a limit on what one may spend to get elected, Congress may offer public financing to those candidates who subscribe to spending limits, as indeed the present law provides in presidential general elections. There are various forms in which the public financing might be

About Archibald Cox As the first Watergate special prosecutor during Richard Nixon's presidency, Archibald Cox refused to bow to the administration's insistence on shielding White House tapes from grand jury inspection. The administration fired him, but the resulting public outcry helped lead to enactment of an independent counsel statute. That was not the first time Cox had challenged a president on principle. During Harry Truman's administration, Cox resigned as head of the Wage Stabilization Board when Truman rejected an agreement Cox had worked out. Truman relented and Cox agreed to return to the board. Cox served as solicitor general during John Kennedy's administration, successfully arguing major civil rights cases. And he served as chairman of Common Cause from 1980 through 1993, where his goals included reforms in our system of campaign finance.

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provided: direct grants, matching payments, publicly funded communications vouchers. My personal preference is for direct grants large enough to run an effective campaign without becoming indebted to special donors, the kind of plan established in 1974 for presidential general elections. There is probably more support for partial public funding.

The second essential of campaign finance reform is the tighter restriction of PAC contributions. The PAC contributions, unlike many personal contributions, are plainly and simply financial investments made hoping that they will yield earnings in favorable government decisions. The ceiling on individual PAC contributions to individual candidates should be reduced from the present $5,000 limit to $1,000. The total amount an individual candidate receives from PACs should also be limited.

Limits upon PAC contributions will be effective only if the reform measure includes as a third component a prohibition against "bundling." Normally a PAC obtains individual contributions to the PAC and then makes PAC contributions to candidates. In the 1980s, PACs began to have their contributors write checks to designated individual candidates instead of the PAC — but to leave the checks with the PAC. The PAC then bundles together and delivers the checks to each candidate whom it chose to support. The PAC thus receives the credit and the gratitude from the candidate, and the access and influence that go with it. Nevertheless, today the PAC is held to have made no contribution, and it can thus circumvent even the present $5,000 statutory limit.

Fourth, it is important to stop the flow of "soft money" from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions into the coffers of the political parties that spend it for the benefit of presidential and congressional candidates outside the existing statutory limits. The present system of funding presidential campaigns worked well until the mid-1980s, when the Federal Election Commission sanctioned the practice whereby a wealthy donor gives unlimited monies to a national political party, normally Democratic or Republican, and the national party then channels it to its state organizations, which spend it for the benefit of the presidential ticket or Senate or House candidates in ways that can be labeled "party building." The whole process escapes federal law.

In the 1991-1992 election cycle, George Bush and the Republican National Committee raised $49.6 million in this fashion. Each of 69 contributors gave $100,000 or more. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee raised $35.3 million, with 72 contributors each giving $100,000 or more. The money was spent in excess of the public funds provided to them on condition that they receive no private contributions.

The last essential element in any effective reform is reconstitution of the Federal Election Commission. The present commission has done an admirable job in gathering and publishing information about the financing of election campaigns, but it has done little as an enforcement agency. The requirement that there be six members, three of them Republicans and three Democrats, means that all too often the commission is deadlocked along party lines. The present practice of appointing members closely linked to the political parties also means that the commission is at best slow to challenge ways of raising and spending ever larger funds in excess of the statutory limits. Consider the gaping loopholes left by the commission's rulings on bundling and "soft money."

To outline legislation reforming our present system of financing election campaigns is much easier than to persuade Congress to enact it. On the one hand, the vast majority of the people desire reform: eighty-three percent, according to a USA Today/CNN poll. On the other hand, the senators and representatives who vote on a reform bill and the president who must sign it, and the political parties to which they belong, are all beneficiaries of the present system, indebted to the special interests that supply such large proportions of their funds.

Yet there are also encouraging signs. This July the Senate, over the strong resistance of the Republican leadership led by Sen. Bob Dole, voted its commitment to the consideration of campaign finance reform during the present Congress. The House had lagged badly, but the Republican leadership indicated that a reform measure would be brought forward in the spring.

Our ability to add to these voices and thus obtain reform depends upon exercising the privileges and accompanying duties of true representative government: informing not only ourselves but friends, neighbors and others in the community, enlisting or building civic associations for a grassroots movement to lobby for early reform, and holding our chosen representatives accountable if they do not work for and then accomplish real reform.

Earlier, I counted the people's growing loss of confidence in the government as one of the costs of the power achieved by lobbyists for special interests under present methods of campaign finance. Confidence in government is closely related to confidence in representative democracy and to its sine qua non, belief in a common good. The link is symbiotic.

A marked decline of belief in the working of self-government weakens and, if the decline continued, could destroy belief in a common good. Happily, the converse is also true. The effective working of government in ways that build confidence in the system, while by no means the only influence, will tend to revive the belief in a common good. *

ABOUT THE AWARD The Paul H. Douglas Ethics in Government Award, established in 1992, is administered by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Recipients are selected by a committee chosen to represent the public and private sectors.

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