Elections: Long Green

Before entering the hospital last week, President Johnson signed a bill that promises both major parties’ presidential candidates a maximum of $30 million each in public funds for the 1968 campaign. The law, in Johnson’s words, is intended to lessen “the danger of undue influence by wealthy campaign contributors.” It may also pave the way for eventual public financing of all political campaigns, even at the city and county levels.

First proposed 59 years ago by President Theodore Roosevelt, who even then was worried about the fine distinction between a big campaign contribution and a bribe, the law was finally passed last month on the 89th Congress’ final day. Called the “Long Plan,” after its Senate sponsor, Democrat Russell Long of Louisiana, it allows the taxpayer to allot $1 of his income tax ($2 in a joint return) for presidential campaign expenses. The amount of the fund will vary in proportion to the number of votes cast in the previous presidential election; it will be divided evenly by the two major parties.

Nothing for Teddy. The law works to the disadvantage of third parties, since they would receive only $1 for every vote they polled above 5,000,000 —a feat that no minor-party candidate has ever accomplished. In fact, under the current formula, even Teddy Roosevelt would not have got a cent for his Bull Moose campaign in 1912. Nor is Alabama’s George Wallace likely to benefit if he becomes a third-party candidate in 1968.

Other deficiencies of the Long Plan: it makes no provisions for financing of primary campaigns, which leaves open the possibility that candidates will already be deeply in debt to big contributors before the major campaign begins. It fails to prohibit the parties from going right ahead and soliciting private contributions to lavish on top of the public funds. And it offers no alternative financing plan in the event that sufficient taxpayers fail by intent or plain indifference to approve the tax diversion on their income tax forms.

Still, as the 1966 elections showed, an effective campaign nowadays can be ruinously expensive. Costs rise even higher in a presidential year: candidates at all levels spent at least $200 million in 1964, including estimates of $40 million by each party for Johnson and Goldwater. In view of the candidates’ growing reliance on TV time, the price of electioneering will clearly continue to soar. As the President noted in signing the Long Act, Congress’ next task will be to scrutinize and tighten up “our campaign-financing laws—which are now more loophole than law.”