Mccain-Feingold Certain To Backfire

The drums along the Potomac are beating for political reform. The reformers, with Common Cause and the editorial page of the New York Times at the front of the pack, have declared the financing of federal election campaigns corrupt and disgraceful. They demand that Congress pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill now being debated in the Senate.

And just who gave us that “corrupt” system? The very reformers who now denounce it.

The campaign financing rules that governed last year’s elections descended from the last round of reforms enacted in 1974, after Watergate. They set the $1,000 limit on contributions to presidential and congressional candidates and established the system of public financing for presidential hopefuls. The idea behind the reforms was simple: Limit the flow of money to candidates and thus reduce the role and power of monied interests in public life.

The idea was also naive. Barred from giving directly to candidates, wealthy individuals, corporations and unions have instead learned to give it directly to political parties as “soft money” - funds that can’t be used directly to advocate the election of a candidate, but that can be spent for “issue advocacy” that looks very much like the same thing.

Interest groups now go outside the system to fund independent committees targeting campaign ads and mailers for and against candidates.

In the 1996 election, as the news reports and Senate campaign finance hearings have revealed, the techniques of rule evasion were honed to a high edge. Like water around the foundation of a house that always finds its way into the basement, political money inevitably found its way around the rules.

But does it matter? And can rules really be written that can reduce the ability of wealthy people and economic interests to gain Washington’s attention? The reformers barely ask, much less answer, those questions.

In all the ruckus in Washington and the press, almost nobody bothers to notice that amounts of money that supposedly “corrupted” the election last year were almost pitifully small. Common Cause complains about the $260 million in soft money contributions that “flooded” the 1996 federal elections. That sum amounts to only about $2 per voter.

Is the political process flooded by the equivalent of the cost of sending every voter four pieces of political mail?

Is it really disproportionate or “obscene” to raise $260 million to determine who will preside over a federal government that spends that much every 90 minutes?

Last year, in a $7.6 trillion economy, campaigns for all offices in the nation spent around $4 billion, or about what Americans spend each year on Nike athletic shoes. Is democracy’s debate less important than jogging shoes with a swoosh?

Watching how politicians raised that money isn’t pleasant. It diminishes the stature of the office when the president chitchats with contributors at White House coffees, pretends that donors sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom are “friends” and lets dubious characters sail into White House receptions on the strength of a big check. When he and other candidates stoop for money, democracy’s shin gets scraped.

But you can’t get the bad taste out of your mouth by drinking from the same rancid cup of reform. Candidates must speak to voters, and in a country of 260 million people, that requires cash. Interest groups that depend on government decisions for hundreds of billions in contracts, benefits and regulatory rulings will seek power and influence, a quest that a free society cannot bar.

It’s Utopian looniness to think that money can be removed from politics.

Yet McCain-Feingold worships at the Utopian shrine. In its current incarnation, it would bar the solicitation and contribution of soft money to the political parties. But the bill is less likely to reduce the importance of political money than to make it flow in other, less public channels.

Last year, 20 percent of federal campaign spending already had found its way to independent campaign committees. If soft money is barred, monied groups and individuals wishing to influence elections will move their money into those independent channels, outside the direct control and accountability of candidates and parties. They will target the races in which they can have the most clout. They will choose the campaign messages - don’t forget that Willie Horton was an independent campaign ad. And they will not be shy about reminding every candidate and officeholder how their independent money mattered in the final outcome. Is that reform?

Short of amending the Constitution to restrict free speech, the only way to reduce the influence of private wealth on campaigns and policy-making is to make it possible for candidates to communicate with voters without having to beg interest groups to foot the bill. Real reform does not mean restricting the resources that go to political speech, but increasing them.

Give candidates free mail and broadcast time - lots of it - to get out their messages. Enact public financing of congressional campaigns; a half-billion every two years would be a bargain compared to, say, the $50 billion tax break, which was later repealed, that the tobacco industry won this year with its big contributions. Increase disclosure of contributions. Shorten campaigns to reduce the need for money.

But above all, don’t pretend that private money can be taken out of politics. That well-trod path only leads to a dead end and increased voter cynicism.

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