Campaign-Finance Reform:
Field Goal or Touchdown?

Mr./Ms. President, the bipartisan bill currently before Congress is the best hope for political reform since the mid-1970's, when Congress established the system of public financing for presidential campaigns and private financing for congressional campaigns. The bill, which would regulate all congressional campaigns, would ban donations to political-action committees (PACs). (In 1995 PACs donated 9 million to freshman congressmen alone.) It would end the scandal of "soft money"--unregulated giving to the two parties by corporations and labor unions for "get-out-the-vote" efforts and other so-called "party building" activities for both congressional and presidential campaigns. It would ban "galas". It would ban the world's most expensive breakfasts. It would ban "bundling"--a way of evading campaign-contribution limits. It would give candidates incentives to stay voluntarily within generous limits of expenditure in their campaigns. Backed by Common Cause, by Democrats such as Congressman Marty Meehan of Massachusetts and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and by Republicans such as freshman Linda Smith from Washington state and Senator John McCain of Arizona, this good bill will not solve all the system's problems. But it will help restore the people's depleted faith in politics and government.

That faith has been shaken over the past thirty years by Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran-Contra--and now it is shaken by anecdotes like this one: in his new memoir, Time Present, Time Past, Senator Bill Bradley writes, "Those who control PACs are often blunt in their quest for any information that might affect their interests. Once, at a big PAC fund raiser for the Democratic Party, a Washington PAC representative came up to me and said, 'Senator, you've lost a lot of weight. What's the matter? Have you got AIDS?'" Bradley says he had to raise $20,000 a week for six years to hold on to his New Jersey Senate seat. Senator Diane Feinstein, of California, had to raise that amount every day in order to fend off a challenge from a multimillionaire in 1994.

Mr./Ms. President, you have a chance to end this mockery by supporting this reform bill. Others say that it does not go far enough. But you have to look at what has a realistic chance of being passed. It has taken ten years to come up with a bipartisan campaign-finance reform bill that has a chance, and the Speaker of the House and the present Senate Majority Leader are dragging their heels on backing this bill. In fact, Gingrich disagrees with the idea that campaigns cost too much. True, this bill does not put mandatory limits on personal-campaign spending. But to do that Congress would have to vote in an amendment to the Constitution negating Buckley v. Valeo (the legal basis for letting people like Forbes, Perot, and Huffington spend astronomical sums of their own money on their campaigns). We both know that voting in a new amendment is unlikely to happen--look what happened to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. The only way this bill will pass is if you put your firm support behind it, without trying to increase what it already does. This bill has reached the greatest common denominator in Congress. If you try push for more the delicate balance of this bill will be upset, and you will miss this rare chance for substantive reform of the political system.

Mr./Ms. President, the bipartisan bill (or the Common Cause bill) is worthy, but worthy isn't enough. The voters want sweeping reform. The Common Cause approach will repeat history. The post-Watergate campaign-finance legislation started out as reform just like this bill. But because it allowed private financing for congressional campaigns, reform proved to be iatrogenic. The problem with the current bill is not the lack of public financing--that is a dead letter as long as public distrust of government remains at toxic levels. The problem lies elsewhere.

Consider this: no PAC money, no soft money, no "bundling," no galas, lower ceilings on individual contributions--but no change in the cost of television ads. Under these circumstances only one sort of person will be likely to enter politics--a rich person. There are no restrictions on what the rich can contribute to their own campaigns. Ross Perot spent $50 million in 1992, and Steve Forbes spent millions in only a few months of 1995 and 1996. This sham "reform" bill would hang a "Only Millionaires Need Apply" sign over American politics. Already the Senate is practically a millionaires' club. This "reform" could well make it a billionaires' club. That's the direction of things, as one example makes clear: in his last Senate race in Wisconsin, William Proxmire spent $500; the man who replaced him in the Senate, Herbert Kohl, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, spent $5 million for the same seat.

Why is it so bad to be governed by the rich? Because plutocracy is inferior to democracy. Because politicians are already out of touch--one Congressman, a freshman Republican, said recently that people making $180,000 a year are "middle class"--and this bill would make them downright remote. Would real wages have fallen for 80 percent of Americans since 1979 if our politicians did not live among (and legislate for) the most prosperous 20 percent of Americans? Look at the suits, shirts, and ties politicians wear. Most Americans could eat for a month on what these fashion plates spend on dry cleaning each week. Why was Bob Dole surprised that New Hampshire primary voters were worried about jobs and wages? Because in his world people eat out all the time. Dole was at least born and suffered in the real world, which is more than you can say of the children of privilege who would have American politics all to themselves if this bill passes. (Yes, FDR was well-born. But he married a social reformer. And he suffered his way to sympathy.)

So what should a President do? Take the Common Cause bill, explain its strong and weak points to voters. Then address the millionaire issue head on.

A narrowly decided 1976 Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, equating wealth with free speech, must be reversed or repealed to deal with the Perot/Forbes loophole in the bipartisan bill. So accept the bill--but combine it with legislation setting in motion the machinery of a constitutional amendment to repeal Buckley. Support "reform" legislation without tackling Buckley, and twenty years from now you will be remembered as the President who took a bad system and--what its critics would not have thought possible--made it worse. For if money equals speech then the more money you have the more speech you can buy on TV. And let's not kid ourselves. The tiny increments of "free" time the networks are offering this year to the presidential candidates will be vastly exceeded by the hours of paid advertising that will soon flood the airwaves.

Go for the real thing, Mr./Ms. President. Don't turn politics over to the wealthy and call it "reform."