Campaign finance reform could have been a lot worse. In 1994, both houses of Congress passed legislation banning soft money, slapping tight restrictions on independent issue ads, and mandating partial public financing of House and Senate races. Only a filibuster that blocked the naming of Senate members to a House-Senate conference killed the legislation. In 1992, it took a veto by the first President Bush to nullify a bill subjecting House and Senate races to sharp spending limits, offering some public financing, dramatically curbing soft money, and capping donations to candidates by political action committees (PACs). A measure of how far we’ve come is the Republican alternative sponsored that year by Bob Dole, then Senate minority leader. It would have reduced to $500 from $1,000 the allowable amount for hard money contributions from out of state. The bill that passed Congress this March is narrow in comparison: It’s campaign reform lite. It actually boosts the hard money limit to $2,000 and indexes it to rise with inflation. This is one reason President Bush reneged on his explicit promise during the 2000 presidential race to veto the Shays-Meehan version of campaign reform. Instead he’s agreed, with reservations about its palpable constitutional flaws, to sign exactly that measure. Another reason is that it will immeasurably aid his reelection campaign in 2004. His Democratic opponent will probably be out of luck until after the party conventions in August, when public financing of the general election kicks in. Without soft money to fund Democratic ads, Bush will have a field day from early spring, taking advantage of his peerless skill in raising hard money to fund a TV ad blitz that Democrats won’t be able to match. It’s not only Republican colleagues and a few journalists who recognize what the leading anti-reformer, Sen. Mitch McConnell, has accomplished over the years. A disgruntled reform group, the Naderite U.S. Public Interest Research Group, does as well. “It’s clear that you’ve won the war on this issue and that the reform community has lost,” two PIRG officials said in a letter to McConnell. “You have shifted the debate so successfully over the past decade that these ‘reformers’ are declaring victory by passing a bill that is much weaker than one you were once forced to support.” McConnell backed the Dole bill in 1992 as the lesser evil. The mainstream press, notably the New York Times and Washington Post, played a key role in passing a reform bill. (The bill exempts newspapers from limits on issue ads.) But the media could be accused of bait-and-switch. McConnell’s aides calculated that either the Times or the Post had a pro-reform editorial every 5 1/2 days, arguing reform was crucial to saving our democracy and curbing corruption. When the bill finally cleared the Senate, a Times editorial declared it “a victory for all Americans.” But on the front page the same day, Richard Berke, the Times’s chief political reporter, wrote: “Many players in financing elections will find their roles untouched–or even enhanced.” A new class of fund-raisers may emerge, he said, “who are industrious about soliciting donations from large numbers of people.” Now they tell us. Reformers, including the well-intentioned Sen. John McCain, should not be conceded the ethical high ground in the campaign finance debate. For one thing, they have assiduously looked out for their own interests. The bill aids congressional incumbents by eliminating soft money, a major source of funding for House and Senate challengers. Incumbents rely largely on hard money and now they’ll get more of it. Also they are terrified of finding themselves in a race against a zillionaire who’s financing his or her own campaign. The new law lets an incumbent raise much more hard money (up to $6,000 per donor) in that case. Also, incumbents balked at giving challengers a break by requiring TV stations to cut or eliminate their fee for campaign spots. That provision was passed by the Senate, then readily abandoned when the House didn’t go along. McCain explained Congress couldn’t withstand pressure from the broadcast industry, and indeed that pressure was intense. Still, the reformers gave up without much of a fight, no doubt privately glad to have averted potential reelection trouble. Then there’s the whole question of corruption. For two decades now, reformers have been claiming that Congress is corrupted by the flood of campaign money. But McConnell has asked repeatedly for examples of who’s been corrupted–and never gotten an answer. But if any donations were to cause a senator or congressman to change a vote, it wouldn’t be soft money. Most members of Congress pay little or no attention to soft money donations to their party. But their minds are riveted on hard money donations to their reelection campaigns. So it would be hard money, not soft, that conceivably could corrupt a member and change a vote. But what do reformers do in their bill? They increase the limit on hard money and get rid of soft. It’s nonsensical. Sure, they argue that’s the best they could do. But the truth is soft money was their chief target from the start. A final jarring aspect of the reform movement is its membership. It’s the ultimate elitist group. The public could not care less about campaign finance reform. Poll after poll has confirmed that. The reform drive was manned by groups funded largely by liberal foundations and the rich. One wealthy figure, Jerome Kohlberg, created his own organization, Campaign Reform Project. It financed newspaper and TV ads, all with soft money. Indeed, the entire reform effort was paid for with unregulated soft money. In other words, well-heeled reformers used soft money to keep the rest of us from using it. And unless the Supreme Court intervenes, they will have succeeded. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
