“Walking Around Money” by Al Sikes

“Walking around money”, it was called. I was twelve years old and helping my Dad run for a seat on Sikeston, Missouri’s Board of Aldermen. In plain sight, I saw money being given to voters. I was told that it was not uncommon to pay somebody to go vote, and the amount of money was generally used to buy a half-pint of whiskey. Whiskey was the pegged commodity, but I suspect the quality was wanting.

The vote transaction was secured by a “driver” who would pick up the voter and take him/her to the polling place. Fast forward 70 years and you have the world’s richest man joined by other very rich Americans, left and right, supplying “walking around money”. In the just concluded election in Wisconsin it didn’t work—hoorah! Elon Musk—politics is not your sweet spot.

Wading into trying to control political spending is self-abuse. One of my heroes, John McCain, fought the good fight to control it and ultimately lost. But, this is an important intersection where our forms of government and business compete.

If I were trying to minimize money in politics, I would use artificial intelligence.  Every check written to help a candidate or cause would need to bear some sort of algorithmic signature. Beyond that there would be some upper limit, a ceiling, that could not directly or indirectly be exceeded.

The law can be written and technology can secure transparency without having hundreds of thousands of clerks checking, combining and publishing reams of paper. If I were to research how to keep track of donations so that voters could keep track of who was giving to whom, I would start at The Federal Reserve. Computer technology would, in the ultimate sense, supply the answer.

And while working toward the goal of transparency, I would consult with the best constitutional attorneys to make sure a constitutionally tight law was enacted. Money is speech and given speech’s protection great care will be needed.

The problem with money as speech is that money is allocated by a range of factors that twist and turn with economic cycles and good fortune that bears scant relationship to merit. If our system of wealth distribution, ultimately requiring societal buy-in, results in handing out billion-dollar merit badges, does Elon Musk deserve an estimated 342 of them?

But of course the bigger story is that the President and richest man in the world were not able to team up and buy or bully a win. The result in Wisconsin was a win for America.

And it is going to get worse for President Trump if he continues his erratic attempts to drum up prosperity using the tools and rhetoric of tariffs. But, one thing to keep in mind. Tariffs, to many, represent an obscure economic policy that can be made to sound rational. Forcing Canada to become America’s 51st state is simply irrational without a costume.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.