Jack Valenti, Hollywood Super Lobbyist, Blamed Money for Ruining Politics

As Hollywood’s longtime lobbyist, Jack Valenti fought hard against copyright infringement, once infamously claiming the VHS cassette was as threatening to the film industry and America as the Boston Strangler was “to the woman home alone.” But on a 1988 episode of Richard Heffner’s PBS show “The Open Mind” he pointed a finger at the negative influence of money on Washington, explaining to fellow guest Donald Rumsfeld how elections are won (through a barrage of TV ads), and how jarring and unpopular bills like SOPA come to exist at all (lobbying).

“Money is the cancer in the belly of American politics,” Valenti proclaimed, calling for spending limits based on number of registered voters per district, a single six year Presidential term, and more reasonable use of TV ads – the kind that win elections and that cost lots of money to make – money that increasingly pressures legislative behavior. According to the most recent records, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the lead author of SOPA, received more money from the entertainment industry than from any other source. (The “computers/internet” industry also gave Smith lots of campaign money, including Google, whose spend on lobbying jumped by 88% in 2011, to $9.68 million, a number that’s expected to keep rising. Google also has its own PAC.)

But Rumsfeld, then fresh off his own brief shot at the 1988 GOP ticket, disagrees with the MPAA boss, arguing that money allows upstarts to run against wealthy incumbents and well-known personalities, and that it’s a form of speech that shouldn’t be regulated.

Valenti’s call for limits on “soft money” campaign spending was answered in part by the campaign finance reforms of 2002. But it was Rumsfeld’s view that was upheld by the Supreme Court in its 5-4 2010 decision in Citizens United, which gave rise to unrestricted spending by dubiously named Super PACs and loosed upon the country the greatest amount in campaign spending its ever seen: upwards of $4 billion in the 2010 election, and an estimated $6 billion for the 2012 cycle, half of which is expected to be spent on TV ads. The increase is especially startling given that only the GOP is fielding candidates this year. In the new issue of The Nation, media critic Robert McChesney and John Nichols paint the sobering picture of our spending explosion:

In 1972, a little-known Colorado Democrat, Floyd Haskell, spent $81,000 (roughly $440,000 in 2010 dollars) on television advertising for a campaign that unseated incumbent Republican US Senator Gordon Allott. The figure was dramatic enough to merit note in a New York Times article on Haskell's upset win. Fast-forward to the 2010 Senate race, when incumbent Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet defeated Republican Ken Buck. The total spent on that campaign in 2010 (the bulk of which went to television ads) topped $40 million, more than $30 million of which was spent by Super PAC–type groups answering only to their donors. In the last month of the election, negative ads ran nearly every minute of every day. The difference in spending, factoring in inflation, approached 100 to 1. The 2010 Colorado Senate race is generally held up by insiders as the bellwether for 2012 and beyond. As Tim Egan puts it, "This is your democracy on meth—the post–Citizens United world."

And there’s another problem, as Valenti points out: the lack of debate and discussion on television, in the style of, well, “The Open Mind.” Valenti, who dutifully served in the White House of Lyndon B. Johnson, had seen the potential of television transform into something more like a national liability. Today, newsrooms are shrinking and political coverage is declining while local stations suck in loads of ad spending. As one investor service wrote in 2011. "While this may fray the already frazzled nerves of the American people, it is great news for media companies."

The implications of our present campaign finance situation have been recently laid out by the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, who evolved his campaign for copyright reform into a fight and book against the more basic problem of money in Washington. "We will never (as in not ever) win the war you care about until we win the war against this corruption of our Republic." As Josh wrote of Lessig in November, “it’s important to keep attacking SOPA and the other threatening 'limbs' which may emerge, but please, he implores, keep focused on the source of the problems, otherwise our lost republic may never be found once again.”

Chris Dodd, former senator and now head of the MPAA, is prohibited by ethics rules from intense lobbying until 2013. But he has called for a White House summit of industry leaders from silicon valley and Hollywood to discuss the terrible effect that not passing a law like sopa is having on american jobs. On Fox News last Thursday, he specified some of the jobs he meant, a clarifying of the stakes.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Dodd’s job – the one Valenti made famous – requires him to be a vigorous piracy fear-mongerer. It doesn’t mean that he has to agree with his predecessor about bigger problems. Apparently, quite the opposite.

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