Mr. Smith Went to Washington

FIVE years ago, the hottest confirmation fight in Washington wasn’t over a judicial nominee, or an ambassador, or a cabinet choice. It was, instead, over a relatively unexalted position on the Federal Election Commission, and it involved a law professor named Bradley Smith, who would soon become, after Sen. Mitch McConnell, the man most hated by what is sometimes known as the campaign-finance-reform community.

Smith earned the reformers’ antipathy by arguing, forcefully and persuasively, that the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill was hopelessly misguided. In fact, Smith believed that most campaign-finance-reform laws, going back to the landmark Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, were hopelessly misguided. “When a law is in need of continual revision to close a series of ever-changing ‘loopholes,'” Smith wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, “it is probably the law, and not the people, that is in error.”

About the Author

Byron York

Byron York is a former White House correspondent for National Review.

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FIVE years ago, the hottest confirmation fight in Washington wasn’t over a judicial nominee, or an ambassador, or a cabinet choice. It was, instead, over a relatively unexalted position on the Federal Election Commission, and it involved a law professor named Bradley Smith, who would soon become, after Sen. Mitch McConnell, the man most hated by what is sometimes known as the campaign-finance-reform community.

Smith earned the reformers’ antipathy by arguing, forcefully and persuasively, that the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill was hopelessly misguided. In fact, Smith believed that most campaign-finance-reform laws, going back to the landmark Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, were hopelessly misguided. “When a law is in need of continual revision to close a series of ever-changing ‘loopholes,'” Smith wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, “it is probably the law, and not the people, that is in error.”