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Campaigns now were not just about who won in any particular district; they were also about which party would control Congress. This control has its own value—especially if, as John Lott argues, the government is handing out more favors, or, in the words of economists, “more rents.”10 Such rents drive demand for control. As corporate law scholars would describe it, they make the “control premium” all the more valuable.11

At the same time that demand for winning was increasing, the core costs of campaigns were increasing as well. Part of the reason for this change was the rising cost of media. But a bigger part was an advance in campaign technology. The machine of politics was more complicated and more expensive. “Campaigns dependent on pollsters, consultants, and television commercials,” Kaiser notes, “were many times more expensive than campaigns in the prehistoric eras before these inventions took hold…. So congressmen and senators who used the new technologies… quite suddenly needed much more money than ever before to run for re-election.”12

These two changes together—if not immediately, then certainly over a very short time—put the monkey on the back of every member of Congress. An activity, despised by most, that for most of the history of Congress was a simple road stop—fund-raising—now became the central activity of congressmen. Each member had to raise more, not just for his own seat but also for his own party. Yet because the most obvious solution to this increase in demand for campaign cash—collecting more from each contributor—was not legally possible, the only way to raise more money was to scurry to find more people to give.13 Congress had tried to limit political expenditures in 1974.14 The Supreme Court had struck down that limit, while upholding the limit on contributions. As Professor James Sample describes it, quoting Professors Pam Karlan and Sam Issacharoff, “The effect is much like giving a starving man unlimited trips to the buffet table but only a thimble-sized spoon with which to eat: chances are great that the constricted means to satisfy his appetite will create a singular obsession with consumption.”15

“No rational regulatory system,” Issacharoff writes, “would seek to limit the manner by which money is supplied to political campaigns, then leave… spending uncapped.”16 Yet ours did. And the result, as Josh Rosenkranz puts it, was a system that turned “decent, honest politicians [into] junkies.”17

Junkies.

And as junkies, they became ever more disciplined in the feeding of their addiction. That discipline, in turn, changed them, and the political world they inhabited.

Supply of Campaign Cash: Substance

As the demand for campaign cash rose, the political economy for its supply changed. The Fund-raising Congress became different from Congresses before. Its values and its ideals, at least as they related to raising campaign funds, were different.

One part of this difference was substantive: the political message of both parties changed in a direction that enhanced the ability of each to raise campaign funds.

First, the economic message of Democrats became much more pro-business.18 Beginning almost immediately after the 1994 Republican sweep, leaders in the Democratic Party launched a massive campaign to convince corporate America that the Democrats could show them as much love as the Republicans traditionally had. As I described in chapter 7, President Clinton led the campaign, especially on Wall Street, as his administration worked feverishly to convince Wall Street funders that Democrats were as convinced of the need for deregulation as Republicans were. At least with respect to the economy, America didn’t have two major parties anymore. Instead, as Dan Clawson and his colleagues wrote: “The country… has just one: the money party.”19 The Democrats’ “populist tradition,” Hacker and Pierson describe, “more and more appeared like a costume—something to be donned from time to time when campaigning—rather than