β Scribed by Bill Bradley; Christopher T. Gates
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Political Reform and the Future of American Democracy M o d e rn political fundraising began with William McKinley' s campaign for p resident in 1896. The innovator was Mark Hanna, a successful Cleveland e n t re p re n e u r-t u rned-political kingmaker, who backed McKinley (at that time the governor of Ohio) in his campaign against William Jennings Bryan. Hanna was the precursor of the modern media consultant, who controls the candid a t e ' s schedule to fit the message and strategy of the campaign. As McKinley sat on his front porch in Canton, Ohio, receiving delegations of well-wishers f rom across the country, Hanna mobilized an army of speakers to crisscro s s the nation, refuting Bry a n ' s famous "Cross of Gold" speech and spre a d i n g w o rd of the merits of the Ohio Republican.
Some re p o rts suggest that the campaign raised as much as $12 million, which would have been a staggering sum in those days. Most of the money came from New York financial circles, through an assessment on banks, which would benefit from the continuance of the gold standard that McKinley staunchly defended. Other donations came from large corporations and wealthy individuals. Hanna' s campaign machinery overwhelmed Bryan, but at least one participant had second thoughts. Theodore Roosevelt, who was then a young police commissioner from New York and McKinley' s running mate, was disgusted by some of Hanna' s methods, complaining that he "advert i z e d McKinley as if he were a patent medicine." Hanna' s fervent courting of the very rich caused Roosevelt to muse on the historian Brooks Adams' s "gloomy anticipations of our gold-ridden, capitalist-be-stridden, usurer-mastered future."
It is not surprising that Roosevelt was troubled by Hanna's campaign tactics. A committed re f o rm e r, the former New York police commissioner was one of several prominent Pro g ressives who, only two years earlier, had founded the National Municipal League (the present-day National Civic League). During the late nineteenth century, America' s largest cities where undergoing deep social and political turmoil. Powerful big-city party bosses and corrupt patro nage machines were the order of the day. The re f o rmers, however, saw the pro blem as more than "individual or partisan corruption"; rather, it was the result of an "antiquated and inadequate system of government" at the local level. A successful movement to professionalize city government and re f o rm local election pro c e d u res made significant improvements in the quality of democracy in many American communities.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
## Abstract This article uses aspects of psychoanalytic theory to explain how the convergence of unconscious mechanisms and ideology in the postβ9/11 political culture enabled the US government to secure consensual support for domestic and foreign policies that attack democracy and make the world m
## Abstract This article presents and discusses the state of the art in political science research on welfare state reform. While scholars first aimed at explaining the emergence and growth of the welfare state, national variation in its development, and crises of welfare state regimes, more recent
During the last thirty years, the use of public opinion polling in American politics has exploded. Practically every day, there is a press briefing in Wa s h i n gton on a new poll. In nearly every contested federal campaign, the candidates spend thousands of valuable campaign dollars on their own p