Edward Crane on Who Has the Real Power in Washington | Big Think

Edward Crane on Who Has the Real Power in Washington

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The Cato Institute CEO says the problem in Washington is we have “an adverse selection process for who runs for Congress.”

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Ed Crane:

Ed Crane is the founder and president of the Cato Institute. Under his leadership, the Cato Institute has grown to become one of the nation's most prominent public policy research organizations. Crane has been a pioneer in framing the political debate as one, not between liberal and conservative, but rather between civil society (the voluntary sector) and political society (government power). He was at the forefront of promoting personal accounts in lieu of the current Social Security system, and was one of the first national leaders of the term limits movement. Crane is the coeditor of several books, publisher of Regulation magazine, serves on the Board of U.S. Term Limits, and is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He is a chartered financial analyst and former vice president at Alliance Capital Management Corp. Crane's writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Forbes. He has been interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and other media. Crane holds a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Edward Crane: Oh, the power structure in Washington is not individuals. It’s a system. It is a system that is immune to criticism. I mean, the effort on the part of people like Jeff Flake and Tom Coburn to get rid of earmarks is heroic but utterly futile. And the bridge to nowhere-- I mean, these people think that they can do whatever they want to. And one of the problems with the system we have, as it exists, in my view, is that under the current system, you have an adverse selection process for who runs for Congress. And there are people who want to be professional politicians, who want to run others’ lives, who want the power of being a politician, and that’s why we need term limits. But it is not some kind of deal where corporate America runs Washington or left wingers do or right wingers do. It is just the center power, and it stays that way and will until there’s some radical change in the way we operate our politics in this country.

Question: How do you encourage the right people to run for public office?

Edward Crane: Well, the people are there. They’re most entrepreneurs, but the way to do it is to have term limits, because a lot of smart people look at the process of getting elected and say, “You know, even if I did get elected, I’m going to have be under the control of professional politicians, and my influence is going to be negligible.” Whereas, if you had a citizen Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives, a lot more people would find that attractive. And of course, there would be a lot more open seats, if you had six-year limits, three terms. There would be a lot of open seats every election. And then the other thing is to get rid of the contribution limits, and then you’d find people-- a friend of mine, Tim Penny, was I think a ten-year congressman from Minnesota. And he was going to run for the Senate for Minnesota after he stepped down voluntarily. And Tim was ahead in the polls against the Democrats in the primary and in any test against Republicans in the general election he was going to win. And he dropped out, and I ran into him, and I said, “Tim, why did you do that?” And he said, “You know, Ed, I was looking at 12 months of eight to 10 hours a day asking people for $1,000, and I just didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to take that time away from my family. I found it demeaning.” Whereas, if 10 people could have gone in and say, “We’ll each give you $250,000, and your campaign is off and running,” I’m sure he would have run. And we’d have a good guy -- Tim Penny was terrific -- in the U.S Senate. So I think the Campaign Finance Laws and the lack of term limits are the problem that we have in getting better people running for Congress.

Question: Do we need to regulate political donations?

Edward Crane: I think that the large contributions give people more choices. As long as you know this is Bill Gates’ candidate, well you can say, “I’m not going to vote for Bill Gates’ candidate,” or George Sorrells’ candidate.

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