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 y adding
President Bush's signature to the legislation passed by Congress,
campaign-finance-reform advocates will hit an anti-democratic triple.
They will make future elections less competitive, strengthen the
mainstream media's grip on political discourse, and run roughshod
over the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech.
In practice,
this hitting streak will soon turn into an outright victory for
incumbency protection. McCain-style campaign-finance reform, replete
with a national soft-money ban and severe restrictions on third-party
advertising, is the new campaign reality.
What will this
reformist utopia look like? Let's measure the reformed "campaign
of the future" against the stated desires of the campaign-finance
reformers.
First, everybody
says that they favor more competitive elections. In recent elections,
98 percent of incumbent congressmen successfully sought reelection.
Out of 435 congressional districts, only a couple of dozen experience
truly competitive elections. This state of affairs is clearly incompatible
with a healthy political system. Unfortunately, the ban on soft-money
fundraising by the national parties will make our elections significantly
more uncompetitive.
How so? Both
major parties use soft money to increase the competitiveness of
individual congressional races. Without those resources pouring
into targeted districts, even fewer incumbents will be threatened
by serious challengers, thereby reducing political competition.
Furthermore, even fewer candidates will step forward to challenge
these incumbents in the first place, thereby reducing political
choice.
Second, campaign-finance
reformers decry public apathy, especially low levels of voter turnout
on Election Day. What is ignored is the fact that the parties also
use soft money to register voters and conduct get-out-the-vote efforts,
especially among minority voters. The best available research concludes
that the federal soft-money ban will decrease voter turnout by two
percent.
Third, the
brazenly unconstitutional restrictions on third-party advertising
during the 60 days preceding Election Day are allegedly intended
to return control over campaigns to the candidates, themselves.
But, as a result of the soft-money ban, the national parties, which
currently coordinate their activities with their candidates, will
have less influence over the campaign. Instead, special-interest
groups, corporations, and labor unions will retain previously donated
funds and, at an earlier point of the campaign, will spend that
money independently of the parties and candidates.
Furthermore,
during the final few weeks of the campaign season, the prescribed
channeling of third-party advertising through political action committees
(PACs), paid for only in hard money (i.e., small) donations, will
result in the proliferation of PACs. An almost infinite number of
such micro-campaigns will perform a series of one-off, hit-and-run
advertising attacks in specific races — all completely outside
the control, but not the purview, of individual campaigns.
The mainstream
media, though, will benefit from these restrictions upon third-party
advertising. During the latter period of a campaign, when the undecided
swing voters who determine the outcome of close elections finalize
their voting intentions, the editorial influence of major newspapers
and the image enhancing or destroying impact of national broadcast
media reporting won't be as comprehensively offset by independent
voices frequently critical of media-dominated conventional wisdom
in general and careerist politicians in particular.
Overall, the
reformed campaigns of the future will be less competitive, less
controlled by candidates, more influenced by the mainstream media,
and involve fewer voters. Most Americans support campaign-finance
reform but this is not the future promised to them by campaign-finance
reformers.
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