Balancing Money in Politics
Two years ago, when the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill was signed into law, it was hailed as a historic victory that would give government back to the people and limit the role of money in politics. "Campaign contributions from a single source that run to the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are not healthy for democracy," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "Is that not self-evident?"
But today, money seems just as firmly entrenched in politics as ever. Wealthy corporate executives around the country are competing to become "Rangers" for President Bush's reelection committee by raising more than $200,000 in $2,000 chunks from friends and business associates. George Soros recently gave $10 million to liberal groups to fund their anti-Bush ads. Wealthy candidates -- the John Corzines and Michael Huffingtons of the world -- are still allowed to self-finance their races if they choose to, in some cases buying their way into serious contention in elections in which they would otherwise stand no chance.
The fact is, McCain-Feingold was a much more modest law than many Americans understood at the time. It had three principal aims. First, the law banned "soft money" contributions to national political parties in an effort to prevent donors from buying access to elected officials. Second, the law tightened the disclosure rules governing ads likely to influence federal elections. Third, the law clamped down on corporations and unions that were using loopholes to avoid long-standing prohibitions on their direct election-related spending.
These are accomplishments, to be sure, but they mostly tinker at the edges of campaign financing. Big money -- whether bundled, donated or shelled out by the candidate himself -- continues to play an enormous and distorting role in the process.
Don't blame Congress for this one. McCain-Feingold might have been stronger -- and money might have been minimized -- had it not been for the Supreme Court's views of the 1st Amendment.
In 1976, the Supreme Court held in Buckley vs. Valeo that spending on political campaigns was at the core of the 1st Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and association.
It would be an unconstitutional abridgement of the right to free expression, the court concluded, to limit the amount of money a candidate was allowed to spend on his or her own race, or to limit political spending by individuals acting independently of candidates or their campaigns -- like MoveOn.org does today.
