The State Feeds the Party and the Party Feeds the State

Every four years, the Democrats and Republicans hold stage-managed conventions that have all the excitement of an ESPN2 rerun of a synchronized swim meet. These propaganda-heavy borefests, which are carried by the television networks, if with increasing reluctance, are now paid for by the taxpayer, thanks to one of FECA’s grosser miscalculations. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, Republicans and Democrats – the language used therein was “major parties,” defined as those which received more than 25% of the nationwide popular vote in the previous presidential election – were eligible to receive a grant of $2 million to cover the costs of their quadrennial convention. Minor parties could receive a fraction of this amount, depending on the vote they received four years prior – as long as it was above 5% but below 25%. New parties are out of luck: no pot of gold awaits them at the beginning of the rainbow. This sum of $2 million, to be adjusted for inflation every four years, was expected to pay most of the conventions’ bills; the remainder were to be picked up, or so the intention was, by state and local governments. The theory – or the baseless hope – was that by substituting government subsidy of conventions for the previous mishmash of party funds and private support, the parties would no longer be beholden to greedy special interests. After all, the federal government is above the fray, beyond mere sectarian bickering. To be funded by Washington means that one has achieved a kind of transcendental objectivity. Nothing purifies a corrupt institution quite like an infusion of federal cash. That, anyway, was the theory.