|
 ampaign-finance
reform has arrived — again. "Enron focuses the debate,"
proclaimed Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.), as he supplied the 218th
— and decisive — signature on a discharge petition to
force the Shays-Meehan bill out of House committee. Maybe Neal was
right about the Enron debacle. Both parties are conspicuously reaffirming
their commitment to rein in campaign-finance abuses. But back in
the real world, there's no evidence so far of political chicanery.
All the same,
"reformers" insist on regurgitating Shays-Meehan for the
umpteenth time. Their zeal endures, notwithstanding consistent Supreme
Court pronouncements over a quarter-century that curbing corruption
is the only reason to restrict political speech. Yet nobody has
identified a single politician who has been tainted by so-called
soft dollars, much less one who might sell out for a paltry $1,000
in hard dollars — a limit that has persisted for 27 years despite
being gutted by inflation. A bill like Shays-Meehan, which bans
soft dollars and leaves the cap on hard dollars pretty much in place,
will only divert the riches through some other loophole. Besides,
would-be supporters know that the political risk is huge, especially
if your party needs soft dollars and the other guys have a big lead
in raising cash.
That's the
dilemma facing reformers in the House. To make matters worse, the
bill they're being asked to pass trashes the First Amendment by
prohibiting most radio and TV ads except when voting day is so far
away nobody cares. Naturally, that prohibition doesn't apply to
the media. So Philip Morris can't mention the name of a candidate
in an ad within 60 days of an election. But if the company acquires
a TV station, the speech restrictions vanish. The idea is to stop
big bucks — except media big bucks, of course — from buying
votes. But the so-called reformers ignore the commonsense fact that
the cash follows the views, not vice-versa: Dollars flow to politicians
who share a donor's views.
Believers in
campaign-finance reform like to talk about expanding opportunities
to participate in the political process, but in fact the Shays-Meehan
bill does the opposite. Still, in past voting, 252 members backed
the legislation. That's because they knew that the Senate's counterpart
bill, McCain-Feingold, would die. And it did. This time, however,
there's no free vote. McCain-Feingold redux is a done deal. No wonder,
therefore, that the "reformers" backed off when Speaker
Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) insisted on separate votes on 14 last-minute
amendments that Rep. Chris Shays (R., Conn.) and Rep. Meehan (D.,
Mass.) hurled at the Rules Committee. Most of the Democrats, including
the Congressional Black Caucus, yielded to political reality and
postponed their anti-corruption charade.
The controlling campaign-finance principle, if you can call it that,
seems to be: Better no reform bill than a bill that handicaps our
party's fundraising. Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.) offers
a more elegant, albeit disingenuous, exposition: "Two important
values [are] in direct conflict: free speech and the desire for
healthy campaigns; you can't have both." Nonsense. Free speech
is the quintessence of a healthy campaign. Both can be destroyed
by regulation. Far from granting power to government, the First
Amendment is intended to withhold that power. Otherwise, politicians
will decide what we can say about them.
As for money,
it's just a symptom. Overweening government has wormed its way into
nearly every aspect of our lives. Our pervasive regulatory and redistributive
state creates huge incentives for profiteering. Because of the big
government problem there's a big money problem. By cutting government
down to size, we can minimize the influence of big money. Restoring
the Framers' notion of enumerated, delegated and thus limited powers
will get the state out of our lives and out of our wallets. That's
the best way to end the campaign-finance racket and root out venality
without jeopardizing political expression.
Until then,
let's protect political ads at least as much as we protect Internet
porn and flag burning. The suppression of political speech is intolerable
in a free society. Not surprisingly, when the state tries to control
political information, powerful forces work to outwit the system.
That's the way it should be if the First Amendment means anything.
|
