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Option BMoney Is Speech -- Keep It FreeI'll tell you what is at stake on this issue: the First Amendment is at stake. Free speech is at stake. And, to quote the ACLU-allied writer, Wendy Kaminer, "Money makes speech possible." All governments find free speech inconvenient; some have found it fatal. The reformers counterpose speech with democracy. But how can democracy be served by censoring political speech? Free speech is the condition of the perfection of democracy. It cannot serve the ends of free government to weaken its predicate. Without a guaranteed right of free speech, democratically elected governments can, have, and will become oppressive. Without it they can exercise the tyranny of the majority over minorities and individuals, silencing those who express unpopular opinions or who write books, paint pictures, or make films offensive to majority taste. Is the amount of money in politics discouraging citizens from voting? You can argue that flat or round. Perhaps many people don't vote because there is not enough political speech. Because the parties don't speak for them. Would less political speech get them back to the polls? Perhaps non-voting is a sign of contentment. Our free society and generally successful economy give people the luxury to ignore politics, if they like. Reformers want to insulate politics from a society marked by inequalities of wealth and power. The regime of liberty, for better or worse, is inequitable. The answer to the outsize influence of wealth and power in politics and government is more democracy, not less. If 75 percent instead of 35 percent of Americans voted in congressional elections, politicians could not afford to ignore the people as, admittedly, they now do. Those who are content need robust political speech to rouse them from their civic torpor. The burden is on reformers to use political speech, including soft money from interested groups, to that end. Here comes that cliché, "the slippery slope," but who can calculate the unintended consequences of "reform?" The 1974 "reforms" led to soft money, a portent. An early version of the reform legislation now in Congress, the McCain-Feingold bill, would have banned issue advocacy on television within thirty days of an election. That indicates the reformer's mindset. They mean to outlaw diversity of opinion. If they want real reform, reform that's constitutional and free-speech friendly, let them pass legislation requiring broadcasters to make free time available for political speech as a public service, or lose their license to broadcast. If time were free, candidates and parties would not need to raise vast sums of money, most of which now goes to pay for television ads. Congress has the authority to do that, and you should insist that they exercise it. Buckley allows a further avenue for reform. It ruled that public financing is legitimate provided it is voluntary and does not rule out private contributions. Reformers in four states (Massachusetts, Arizona, Maine, and Vermont) have taken this as a green light to create what are called Clean Money elections -- clean in that candidates who agree to forgo private campaign contributions can receive full public funding to conduct their campaigns. Clean Money can be an asset in a campaign, just as refusing it can be a political liability. Oregon and Missouri will have Clean Money on the ballot this year. Clean Money, we should note, has been challenged as unconstitutional, and a test case is winding its way toward the Supreme Court. But on its face it would appear to meet the Buckley standard of constitutionality. We will see. The point, Mr./Ms. President, is that political reform does not require a ban on political speech.
Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. |
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