To clean up politics, we’ve got to get dirty.

Instead of squandering millions of dollars on public financing of campaigns through Maine’s Clean Election Act, it’s time to acknowledge reality. Providing a few thousand bucks from the public coffers to a legislative candidate doesn’t reduce the amount of private funding expended on any particular race. It just diverts money that might have been donated directly to the campaign to political action committees (some run by the allegedly “clean” politicians themselves) and other outside groups with difficult-to-discern agendas and a roster of donors they’re legally allowed to keep secret.

Campaign-finance reformers’ efforts to get the big money out of politics have only succeeded in making it tougher to figure out where the private cash is coming from. That’s because the Clean Election crowd has always been obsessed with the amount spent, rather than the intentions of those behind those huge checks.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that relieves taxpayers from the burden of paying for politicians’ lawn signs and TV spots, and makes it easier to figure out who’s buying up candidates for nefarious purposes.

I call it the Maine Dirty Election Act.

Let’s face it, nearly all hotly contested campaigns are dirty. But under the current complicated system, it’s almost impossible to figure out who’s shoveling that dirt. Shadowy organizations with names like the Concerned Citizens Intent on Improving the Lives of Every Mainer Except Possibly the Poor and Middle Classes and Assorted Others of Their Ilk operate on the political fringes because that’s the easiest way to influence outcomes. By limiting or banning direct contributions to candidates, we’ve made it more inviting for odious special interests to cloak their activities behind these legal – but reprehensible – fronts.

But what if individuals could give any amount to any politician? The only requirement would be that such contributions must be fully disclosed immediately upon receipt. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have to be treated like people for political purposes, they too should be allowed to donate without limits. The catch is they must reveal the names of their principle owners, their top management and all of their spouses, kids, pets and BFFs.

I can hear the Clean Election crowd howling in protest that this system would allow rich people and their corporate cronies to buy candidates wholesale. But the wealthy already do that. Under the current rules, we just don’t know about it. The Dirty Election Act would fix that by making it clear (I know, ironic, isn’t it) exactly who is a bought-and-paid-for puppet of whom. Then, if we bothered to do a little research, we could decide which candidates to support or oppose accordingly.

“People are angry,” said a prominent political activist in a recent newspaper op-ed. “People are frustrated with a political and economic system that leaves too many behind. People want a government that either works in the interest of the American people or gets out of their way.”

I could endorse those sentiments if the activist in question wasn’t Andrew Bossie, the executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s not really committed to that “gets out of the way” philosophy and wouldn’t be supportive of my system that does just that – while saving money and increasing transparency – possibly because if he did so, he’d be out of a job.

Instead, Bossie and his cohorts want to increase the amount of public funding available to “clean” candidates, apparently believing the $4 million per election cycle we’re now wasting hasn’t produced a Legislature sufficiently filled with extruded Play-Doh blob-oids incapable of accomplishing anything unless instructed to do so by their secret financial benefactors.

Dirty elections wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d be free, both from costs to taxpayers and undue restrictions. Clean elections conceal their ugliness better, but they carry a high price tag and beget ever more complex regulatory structures. In March, for instance, Bossie’s group released a poll asking voters if they favored forcing gubernatorial candidates to use public money. Such a law would almost certainly be unconstitutional, but the organization nonetheless took pleasure in claiming “almost half” of those polled supported the idea.

Get real. And then, get dirty.

Mudslinging can be directed at me by emailing aldiamon@herniahill.net