A Proposal about Super PACs

In The Washington Monthly, Nick Warshaw (CMC `09) has an innovative idea:

The private sector can and should counter the influence of Super PACs on our electoral system. To add costs to Super PAC spending, we must apply an old business model, insurance, to a new market vertical, Super PACs. Insurance in the Super PAC market, what would be called “Level PAC,” can protect insured candidates from Super PAC expenditures, reduce the influence of money and politics, and produce a return for investors.

Level PAC’s central goal is to deter third-party outside spenders by adding costs to their spending decisions, creating mutually assured destruction in campaign finance. If a Super PAC decides to spend against an insured candidate, Level PAC will respond with an independent expenditure of its own, attacking the preferred candidate of the Super PAC. Adopting General Colin Powell’s “Powell Doctrine” of using overwhelming force, Level PAC would respond with an expenditure two to three times as large as the outside Super PAC’s.