Campaign Financing A Real Snooze

Six months into the campaign-finance controversy that has become an obsession for official Washington, it’s a well-known fact that much of America doesn’t seem to care.

There are many reasons. The stories are complex. Evidence of wrongdoing is murky. White House explanations are plausible. And perhaps most telling, it’s not at all clear that what Clinton and the Democrats did violated the public’s sense of ethics.

Indeed, most people seem to accept that going all-out to raise big bucks is simply the way the world works in the big leagues - whether it’s in the White House or corporate boardrooms.

In politics, it’s squeezing donors for dollars to pay for campaigns. In business, it’s exploiting every last loophole to minimize taxes. In sports, it’s player agents bullying team owners to “show me the money.” In religion, it’s televangelists calling for cash as a test of faith.

It’s the way everyone at the top tier competes in America, in short; they all press the limits of the law to rake in all the cash they can.

“You see it all the time when companies are trying to maximize their earnings per share” by hyping data in their annual reports, said Tom Ochsenschlager, a partner in the Grant Thornton accounting firm in Washington. Higher earnings lure investors and drive up stock prices.

“We (certified public accountants) are constantly trying to put the brakes on companies that try to report higher earnings per share” than the law allows, he said. “Anytime attorneys get involved, you look for loopholes to give you a competitive advantage.”

You see it in Major League Baseball, too.

Last week, baseball officials complained that the Florida Marlins apparently dodged the game’s new payroll-tax system by waiting one day past an April 1 deadline to sign star player Gary Sheffield to a six-year, $61 million contract. The Baltimore Orioles did the same thing, signing Cal Ripken to a sweet deal the same day. By delaying past the deadline, both clubs avoided a stiff penalty tax on excessive payrolls.

That’s the way the game is played in business, in sports - and in politics. So when people learn that their president pushed the limits of the money-raising game too, they may not like it, but they aren’t exactly shocked.

“This is the most overblown issue in American politics,” said Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonpartisan research group. “Ninety-five percent of what has been revealed so far is essentially politics as it always has been and always will be so long as we privately finance campaigns …

“All the issues being called corruption are not corruption. There may be a few things that may be problems … but the public is concerned with more important issues: crime, health, safety, education. This thing pales into insignificance,” Gans said.

Gail Hanley of Charlotte, N.C., speaks for many, perhaps most, Americans. She followed news reports about Clinton’s campaign-finance controversy until she “got bored with it. It seems to be a little bit on the sensationalized side.”

“I’m more concerned with my day-to-day - can I make it to the Y and back without getting run off the road by some drug dealer,” said Hanley, still fuming because a few days ago, the driver of a low-rider Mercedes with gaudy chrome wheels forced her off the highway while he talked on a cellular phone. “I’m more concerned with crime, the environment, the economy.”

Polls leave little doubt that the public feels much the same way.

Survey after survey - by CBS, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post - shows that two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans believe that what Clinton and the Democrats did in raising money for their 1996 campaigns amounts to “business as usual” by both parties.

Of course, the people don’t necessarily approve of it all; nine out of 10 polled by The New York Times in early April said they think the campaign-finance system needs fundamental change.

But neither are they all that worked up about it.

The same poll showed Clinton retains a strong 56 percent jobapproval rating. Only 12 percent said they followed campaign-finance news reports “very closely.” Far more - 43 percent - complained that the media are spending too much time on it.

“I really think they’re making too big a deal of it,” said Robert O’Brien of Bismarck, N.D. “I’m not at all displeased by (Clinton’s money-raising). I guess I’m displeased by the tremendous amount of coverage and rhetoric on both the political side and the news side. I think it’s a waste of resources and time to cover that at such detail and length.”

To be sure, some people are troubled. And upcoming congressional investigations or further revelations could turn public opinion.

“I think what they did is very wrong. And I think (independent counsel) Ken Starr has every right to examine him on all that,” said Debbie Bennett, manager of Maurice’s Gourmet Barbeque in Columbia, S.C. It may just be politics as usual, Bennett said, but “I still don’t think it’s right.”

Neither does John Crouse of Washington, Pa.

“I’ll tell you what upsets me if you want to know - not enough people are upset,” Crouse said. “I think the mad rush to get all that money for the campaign from whatever source they could is wrong. That’s all.”

Crouse conceded that Clinton and the Democrats apparently did no more than commit “politics as usual,” much the same as super-competitors in the worlds of big-league sports and business.

But at 77, Crouse clings to a perhaps old-fashioned belief that those who govern should be held to a higher standard.

“They put themselves up for public election, and once they do that, they have a damn high standard to maintain. … Starting with George Washington and Abe Lincoln,” Crouse said. “I’m concerned about the decline of standards in our whole political and governmental system. I really am concerned.”