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One problem with reform is that it seldom works on the first try. The flaws inspire more tinkering, the tinkering produces more complexity, complexity leaves unintended loopholes, exploitation of the loopholes provokes more reform, and this spiral continues indefinitely.
So it is with campaign finance reform,
and I
can't be the only one who gets confused by hard
money,
soft money,
527 organizations
and
the like. In theory, anyway, campaigns should be about
putting information and arguments in front of the public so
that we can decide how to vote. And it's hard to see how
our complex campaign-finance laws assist in this
process.
Federal campaign laws started with noble intentions in 1867, when federal employees were forbidden to solicit campaign contributions from dockyard workers building naval ships. This was expanded in 1883, so that no federal employee could be forced to contribute to a political campaign in order to keep his job.
The major impetus for campaign-finance reform in the
past 30 years has been to reduce the influence of big
money
on elections. Since the federal courts have
equated money with speech, any regulation of political
money becomes a regulation of speech.
Such regulation is expressly prohibited by the First
Amendment, but the Constitution must not mean much these
days, since the most recent reform (McCain-Feingold) bans
certain kinds of advertising during certain intervals, and
allows you to spend as much of your own money as you want
if you're a candidate, but denies that right to your
supporters -- what ever happened to the notion of equal
protection under the law?
Some reformers propose another step, public financing of campaigns with limits on expenditures. But given the talents of American political operatives of all stripes, we know they'd find a way around that. Instead, why don't we consider eliminating all campaign-finance laws, including even the disclosure requirements?
There's the argument that this would just turn
everything over to big money,
but big money is
present now, and further, it doesn't always win (i.e.,
compare the spending on our Referendum A last year, or
recall John Connally's expensive campaign for the
Republican nomination in 1980, or how Howard Dean raised
the most money of the Democratic candidates this year).
Let people spend what they want and say what they want -- isn't that the American way?
But what about disclosure? For one thing, if we weren't looking at the money, we might pay attention to the arguments. If Candidate A says we need a national health care system and explains how it would work, and Candidate B tells us we have the best health care system in the world, do I really care where B gets his money to spread his lies?
Further, these disclosures often point to some outfit
like Citizens for Better Air,
which turns out to be
a bunch of coal-company executives or hog-farm operators.
The disclosures can be more deceptive than anonymity.
But wouldn't our political discourse suffer if we had
all manner of anonymous or pseudonymous campaign material
circulating all the time?Americans somehow managed to elect
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln under
those circumstances. One of the most important political
decisions in American history, the adoption of the federal
constitution, was partly the result of pseudonymous
essayists (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
all writing under the name Publius
) to produce the
Federalist Papers of 1787-88, which were a series of
arguments as to why New York should ratify the
constitution.
The papers were deceptive in that Publius presented himself as a New York man addressing his fellow New Yorkers -- yet Madison was a Virginian. But the lack of a known human author meant that voters faced the arguments and issues concerning the constitution. Consideration of the constitution was not sidetracked by arguments about Madison's ownership of slaves or Hamilton's faithfulness to his marriage vows.
So far as I can tell, campaign finance reform has not improved our political discourse, and no imaginable law would ever eliminate the influence of money in our elections. All that reform has produced is a complex maze of regulations that infringe upon our First Amendment rights. Call it something that looked like a good idea at the time, like Prohibition, and treat the campaign finance laws the same way as Prohibition -- repeal them.
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