Lieberman on campaign finance reform

David Glenn dglenn at igc.org
Mon Aug 7 07:54:58 PDT 2000


This essay by Joseph Lieberman, from the July '98 Atlantic Monthly, is astonishingly blunt (for a Dem Senator) about the 1996 Clinton/Gore campaign misdeeds -- Nader and Bush will quote from this if they're clever.

But the tone of the essay seems a little too earnest-schoolboy. Not much real anger here. And has Lieberman, in real life, fought in a serious way for the reforms he calls for in this essay (public financing, a ban on "issue-advocacy" ads)?

And of course he manages to include a drearily moralistic passage re: Hollywood's tendency to "debase us all". . . and an implicit call for censorship: "Our experience in the so-called culture wars tells us that it is unrealistic to expect politicians to change their behavior and elevate their standards voluntarily."

Has LEAP had any relationship with Lieberman over the years?

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jul/republic.htm



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