The Center for Public Integrity

A group of Wall Street investors, media executives and fiscal policy experts have created a new political group that intends to spend $10 million to oust Republican and Democratic members of Congress who don't favor free-market policies strongly enough.

The year 1986 was very good for George W. Bush.

The same day that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore unveiled his campaign finance reform proposal, an organization with ties to former California Gov. Pete Wilson launched a national attack on Gore by exploiting a tax-law loophole that allows a group to influence elections without having to report its existence to the Federal Election Commission or the Internal Revenue Service.

For as little as $5,000, corporations are buying access to presidential candidate George W. Bush, along with key Bush strategist Karl Rove—not to mention potential protection from billions of dollars in lawsuits.

Sixty of George W. Bush's overnight guests at the Texas Governor's Mansion have collectively given and raised more than $2.2 million to further Bush's political career, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows. At least 15 of Bush's guests are members of Bush's elite team of presidential fund-raisers, the $100,000-plus "Pioneers," according to the full list of overnight guests from January 1995 through February 2000.

For months, disarray was the hallmark of Vice President Al Gore's campaign. Last October 6, he moved his campaign to Nashville from Washington and fired most of his top tier of advisers, including his campaign manager, ad man and pollster. One reason for the move was that the campaign was hemorrhaging money on exorbitant salaries and fancy downtown digs in the nation's capital. The other was to dispel the notion that Gore, raised on Embassy Row in a penthouse apartment in the tony Fairfax Hotel, was running a campaign that was Washington to its core. His Washington insider image also became a target of Democratic opponent Bill Bradley, who despite three terms in the U.S. Senate, had effectively repackaged himself as a man who eschewed the inside-the-Beltway mentality. In a January interview with the New York Times Magazine, Gore noted that his earlier decision was a big mistake: "I look back at the beginning of the year, while the impeachment trial was about to begin and incoming rounds were landing on the White House roof every 30 seconds, and I can't believe that I decided to put the campaign on K Street. You know, hello?"

Throughout his political career, Bill Bradley has defined himself by what he is not.

Pat Buchanan's switch to the Reform Party on Oct. 25, 1999, was a dramatic change in the fiery commentators political life. A lifelong conservative Republican who had served in both the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, Buchanan was a stalwart of the GOP's social conservative movement and a legitimate, albeit fringe, contender for the Republican presidential nominations in both 1992 and 1996.

British statesman George Canning wrote more than a century ago: "Away with the cant of 'measures, not men!' the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariots along." Information for citizens about the elaborate electoral process (a.k.a. "the horse race") and individual candidate statements and policy positions is obviously very interesting and important every four years as the most powerful nation on earth peacefully transfers power, and most news media coverage focuses heavily on these aspects.

It is no surprise and nothing new in the land of the spin and the home of the sound bite that each and every candidate for the presidency in the year 2000 would like to convince us that he and only he is the candidate of reform, the candidate with integrity, the candidate who will bring a new day to America. Amid all the words and posturing, the Center for Public Integrity once again takes a dispassionate look at those who craft the message that makes the candidate. Our conclusion: nothing new, little sign of reform, little goes on that is not packaged by party machines, lobbyists and special interests.