Proponents of campaign finance reform have long insisted that their goal was to end the corrupting influence of “too much money in politics.” The heart of their argument is that democracy is subverted when wealthy individuals or Fortune 500 corporations are able to use campaign contributions to exempt themselves from public policies that threaten their own interests.

Trouble is, giving elected officials the power to regulate how their campaigns are funded makes no more sense than putting the proverbial wolf in charge of the hen house. Doing so turns campaign finance laws and regulations into little more than incumbent protection tools. At the most basic level, putting a $1,000 ceiling on individual contributions to incumbents and challengers seriously handicaps the latter by magnifying the advantages of incumbency. Those advantages include, among much else, huge tax-paid staff, office and communications resources that hardly any challenger can match.