Incumbency and the premise of “too much money”
Bob Zadek opened a 2015 episode with Duke University economist Mike Munger by framing campaign finance laws as written by officeholders for their own protection, asking whether the deck is stacked in favor of incumbents Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015). Munger, who ran for Governor of North Carolina in 2008 as a Libertarian and worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission, called the characterization completely accurate but quarreled with one part of it: he said politicians do not think of these laws as self-interested, but genuinely believe they are acting in the public interest, which he called the most terrifying feature of the problem Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015).
Munger reframed the question by asking how one would tell whether there is too much money in United States politics, noting that other democracies such as Israel and Japan spend far more, and locating the real function of money in the fact that voters are less than fully informed about the alternatives presented to them Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015). Because the system is adversarial and there are no state newspapers presenting the truth about a candidate’s positions, he argued, the only way to run against an incumbent is to present a well-articulated alternative, and the incumbent already has the bully pulpit. On that reasoning he said the amount spent is not nearly enough, observing that more is spent advertising yogurt and toothpaste than on all elections in the entire United States combined in an election year Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015).
The First Amendment frame
In a 2010 episode, Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, told Zadek that the biggest assault on the First Amendment in the country over the previous ten years was campaign finance reform, which restricted political speech A Libertarian Plan (2010). Welch said it had thankfully been pared back to the point where one no longer needs the federal government’s approval to put up an advertisement criticizing a local congressman. He made the point while insisting the problem is bipartisan, telling Zadek that both parties, especially when they hold power, find excuses in elastic phrases in doctrinal law to justify expansions of government in dollar costs and intrusions into private life A Libertarian Plan (2010). The exchange arose from a caller, Forest, a Republican candidate running against Pete Stark in Congressional District 13, who argued that the far-left view of the Constitution treats its wording as license to serve an agenda regardless of its spirit A Libertarian Plan (2010).
The 2015 episode’s summary describes the discussion as debunking the popular narrative that there is too much spending compared to commercial advertising, treating Citizens United as a victory for freedom of association, and explaining how government power creates the incentive for rent-seeking and regulatory capture by established corporations Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015).
The Court as decision-maker
David Kaplan, in a 2019 episode on the Supreme Court, argued that the Court helped make Congress dysfunctional because it intervenes on so many key issues and controls its own docket, choosing which cases to hear Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019). He listed voting rights, the 2000 presidential election tie between Bush and Gore, and campaign finance among the areas where the Court takes unto itself the role of decision-maker, with the result that members of Congress ask why they should stick their necks out and take a political risk when the justices right across the street are going to decide Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019). Zadek had put the causation question to Kaplan directly, asking whether the Court’s assumption of too much power weakened the other branches or was itself an effect of that weakening; Kaplan answered that it goes both ways Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019).
Disclosure and the anonymity exception
Jeff Kosseff, in a 2022 episode on anonymity, described a line of cases beginning in 1960 and extending into the 1990s and early 2000s in which the Court repeatedly held that government requirements forcing the authors of pamphlets to put their names on them violated the First Amendment The United States of Anonymous (2022). He traced the historical right of anonymous speech to Thomas Paine and the Federalist Papers, and noted that Justice Thomas, an originalist, concurred with majorities written by liberal justices while arguing they should have gone further, on the reasoning that so much of what was written at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted was anonymous and pseudonymous. Justice Scalia, also an originalist, strongly disagreed, saying that if anonymity was meant it would say so The United States of Anonymous (2022).
Kosseff then identified campaign finance and elections as the primary area where the Court has said there is no right to anonymous speech. He described the Court as holding that even if the ability to spend money on ads will not be restricted, those who spend must disclose who is behind the ads, and that the same applies to the names of people who have signed ballot referenda The United States of Anonymous (2022). He characterized the Court’s position as resting on a strong public interest in informing the electorate and making sure voters understand who is funding campaigns, and noted that in recent decades these rulings have often come over the dissent of Justice Thomas, usually only his The United States of Anonymous (2022).
Zadek responded that the distinction struck him as indefensible hypocrisy, arguing it makes no difference whether one is anonymous in distributing a pamphlet expressing a political point of view or in supporting that part of the political process with money The United States of Anonymous (2022). He said that if the fear is money polluting or becoming toxic, the problem lies with the politician who allows himself or herself to be influenced by the money, not with the giver, and he called the treatment of ballot propositions a distinction without a difference The United States of Anonymous (2022).
Third parties and ballot access
A 2023 episode with Tom Campbell on the Common Sense Party, a third-party movement in California, covered institutional barriers to third parties including campaign finance laws and ballot access Moving California Forward with the Common Sense Party (2023). The excerpt summary frames the discussion as an effort to break the Democratic-Republican duopoly and to explore a more centrist, independent-minded political landscape, with campaign finance listed among the topics Moving California Forward with the Common Sense Party (2023).
Across episodes
The topic recurs across 2010, 2015, 2019, 2022 and 2023, and the excerpts show no development in the argument so much as a division of labor. Welch in 2010 supplies the First Amendment objection to reform; Munger in 2015 supplies the public-choice account of incumbency and the empirical challenge to the “too much money” premise; Kaplan in 2019 supplies the institutional claim that the Court’s intervention on campaign finance drains Congress of responsibility; Kosseff in 2022 supplies the doctrinal exception for disclosure; and the 2023 Campbell episode places campaign finance among the barriers facing third parties. The later treatments do not revise the earlier ones, and no guest in these excerpts responds directly to another’s argument.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not identify the statutes at issue by name beyond the topics list’s reference to McCain-Feingold, nor do they state what Citizens United or McConnell v. FEC held. They do not give the outcome of any disclosure case, the text of any disclosure requirement, or the reasoning of the dissents beyond Thomas’s originalism. The 2010 caller’s account of the honest services fraud clause and the Skilling case is not connected in the excerpts to campaign finance, and the 2023 episode’s treatment of ballot access is not developed beyond the summary.