Last week, the FEC approved a policy intended to improve, by requiring more clarity and detail, the political committees’ reporting of disbursements. The Campaign Finance Institute had filed comments in support of still more detail, more emphasis on what money was spent "for" rather than "on."  For example, it wished to see specific identification of the types of media for which money was spent—Internet, TV, radio, etc.—and  not only the funding of "media" in general.  When the FEC declined to follow the CFI approach, CFI was unhappy and publicly critical.

     Brad Smith at the Center for Competitive Politics has since posted a characteristically incisive, cutting retort to the CFI, suggesting that CFI was making a federal case out of its own organizational interest in having abundant data for studies and advocacy.  Smith writes that we should "remember that disclosure has its price, and not everything labeled 'disclosure' is beneficial, called for, or constitutional."

     This argument—that disclosure is not priceless—is never popular with the press, and it is, of course, understandably threatening to other organizations having a mission of collecting and analyzing (and proselytizing on the basis of) data about political activity.  Smith notes correctly that in calling for information in the "public interest," these organizations are also pursuing it in their own interest, which it takes to be same. 

     It also does not escape Smith’s notice that organizations with staunch commitments to disclosure are skittish about too much disclosure of their own, about their own activities.  (And, to be sure, this comment is not directed to CFI in particular, which is not known to me to hide anything in particular about its finances or activities, or to refuse to answer questions about it.)  The IRS form 990 filed by 501(c) tax exempt organizations is not lavish with the specifics that CFI implores the FEC to adopt for political committee reporting.

      As argued here, some of the interest in more detailed disclosure is, in effect, an interest in more regulation.  With more data, there is more "oversight"; and with more of this oversight, there is more rulemaking, to address "problems" revealed by various readings of the data.  That this is an intended use of data is not an argument against any disclosure, but there is some virtue in being clear about why some of the disputes about disclosure are so fierce.  These are regulatory disputes, not merely advocacy on behalf of a public somehow in the market for this kind of information.

      On the evidence, the public does not really care too much about these disclosure wars.  After all, the FEC received two comments—two—about the proposed disclosure policies, both from tax-exempt organizations dedicated to disclosure.  Not even a blogger or two, writing regularly about politics, bothered to express a preference for one level of detail over another. 

      But the public does seem engaged with stories about political skullduggery, and the press and reform advocates regularly cater to this interest in accusing politicians and political committees of suspicious secretiveness and "closed-door deal-making."  In this respect, the insistence on disclosure—which is the converse of the suggestion that disclosure is being withheld—is another way, understood by the public, that politicians and parties are pictured as forever trying to get away with something.  For this, there is a market, its product cheaply manufactured and cheaply sold.

      This morning, the New York Times, leading as always by example, complained that the Senate and House should reform its ways by allowing C-Span to roam widely over the floor during live coverage.  "A Dose of Reality TV for Congress," New York Times (Dec. 20, 2006).  What is the Times looking for?  It would like the public to see the corner conversation or private huddle—the private exchanges in the middle of public oratory, the "sideline wheeling and dealing."  

     The public should know what is" really" happening, because—or so the Times implies—the formal proceedings are a bit of a fraud.  With a camera ever on the prowl, we might notice the Senator who is not listening or the House member who is reading a paper, and, as the Times remembers affectionately, the "touch of humanity during President Clinton’s impeachment when one weary Senator listened to the interminable proceeding with his shoes off."

     Disclosure here is intended as a humbling device, another way to expose politics’ pretensions, to show it for what it is.  Among some observers of politics, this is a mark of supreme sophistication:  to ignore a speech while scouting for the Member who is not listening or who, having become weary, has taken his shoes off.  And to imagine that something taking place in the corner, out of earshot, is far more important than the argument presented directly to the public. 

     This is the message to the public:  you are being had.

Bob Bauer