Pave: Bought And Paid For

Le jour 229 de Sarko

LES PARTIS POLITIQUES DANS LE ROUGE EN 2006
[POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE RED FOR 2006]
29 décembre 2007 (Figaro)

All the major parties in France, save one, overspent their budgets in 2006 according to the annual report by the political finance commission published in the government Journal Officiel.

Parties running a deficit:

1. Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, UMP
   Expenditures €56.4M | Overspend €3.3M | Overspend percentage 6%
   
2. Parti socialiste, PS
   Expenditures €49.3M | Overspend €762,362 | Overspend percentage 1.5%
   
3. Union pour la démocratie française, UDF
   Expenditures €8M | Overspend €1.6M | Overspend percentage 20%
   
4. Parti communiste français, PCF*
   Expenditures €33M | Overspend €829,562 | Overspend percentage 2.5%
   
5. Les Verts
   Expenditures €5.4M | Overspend €165,701 | Overspend percentage 3%

Parties running a surplus:

1. Front national, FN
   Expenditures €8M | Underspend €448,979 | Underspend percentage 5.6%
   
2. Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, LCR
   Expenditures €2.15M | Underspend €617,237 | Underspend percentage 28.7%
   
3. Lutte ouvrière, LO
   Expenditures €3.9M | Underspend €1.7M | Underspend percentage 43.5%**

This is hardly news in America where political parties always overspend. Win or lose, parties go begging their constituencies for money to avert the imminent doom, the certain apocalypse the opposition will visit on us all if not stopped at the bank guichet. If a party were to live within its means, well, aside from spoiling it for everyone else, there would be no urgency to its fundraising. Were American political parties to campaign modestly, were they to forgo the say-nothing non-stop TV and radio spots, the full-page attack ads, and the endless fundraising letters -- were they to give all these up -- they would be forced to field better candidates. Candidates with manifest merit. Not political creatures propped up and hyped by the parties.

In France it is a different story.

In France the government is the primary financier of political parties. It apportions money to parties based on their strength in the last election. When we first learned about the French arrangements we were not a little shocked. It seemed there were several insuperable difficulties.

• For starters every taxpayer becomes a patron of parties, candidates, and ideas he might find obnoxious or morally insupportable.

• Next, a handout from the government instead of a solicitation of supporters encourages hierarchial and discourages dynamic intra-party politics. In 2002 had parties been reliant on supporters' money, several of the smaller parties could not have afforded to field 1e tour candidates and the public might have had something better than a slate of Hobson's choice candidates from the bigger parties. Of course, there are those who will argue this is what gives French politics its feudal charm. [Pause.] Feudal charm. [Pause.] That would be a protected French cultural asset.

• When a party comes to power in a landslide -- as did the UMP*** in 2002 -- then makes a hash of its mandate and falls out of favor, not to worry. It still goes into the next election cycle with a financing edge based not on its current disfavor but on its long-ago win in the last cycle. In 2006 the UMP budget exceeded the PS budget by 14%, but in the 2007 election UMP only prevailed over the PS with 6% of the vote.

• Then there is the inherent conflict in a constituted government managing the financing of contests to constitute the government.

• Finally, government subsidies have given rise to political lobbies masquerading as parties (e.g., Chasse - Pêche - Nature - Traditions) and crank parties (e.g., Parti des Travailleurs) and solitary cranks (e.g., José Bové). These are not real national parties. They are not even real parties.

We do not pretend to have a model for political financing, but our instincts tell us that the government should not be both the guarantor and the banker of the ballot box. [Pause.] The former is a government's most singular, most profound civil responsibility.

------------------------------------
* See here.

*** UMP then stood for Union en mouvement, later Union pour la majorité présidentielle, and later still Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, assuming sillier and sillier names to preserve its acronym.

PFFT (What is this?): Buying the politics the government thinks you should have 4½ | Rayonnement français 0