IF THE Enron mess has failed to elicit excitement in the hearts and minds of most voters, another issue has appeared on the editorial pages of major newspapers. Last Thursday, four more members of the House of Representatives signed a discharge petition to force a vote on the current version of campaign finance reform.
The addition of two Republicans and two Democrats to the discharge petition brought the number of signatories to 218, the minimum number necessary to force the House Republican leadership to schedule a vote on the matter. In a Jan. 25 editorial entitled "218 at last," The Washington Post wrote like an eight-year old being told about how the rainforests are being destroyed - in a pious and simplistic way.
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"Members have a chance now to slow the money chase that is corrupting national politics," said the editorial. It discussed how the "forces of money-politics" - one might assume these are the bad guys - might still step in and ruin the efforts of the do-gooders.
The Post editorial mimics the kinds of arguments advanced by campaign finance reform advocates over the last decade. They are naive notions, advanced by visions of good and bad political actors. The idea is to remove "soft money" - money that is unreported and, on the surface, does not directly advocate a particular candidate - from the political arena. Allegedly, such an elimination will bring integrity, peace and light to the political process.
The first thing to note is the inherent immorality of the proposal. Of course, few people immediately will say that they are against "reform." A standard conversation might proceed thusly:
Person 1: "Do you like campaign finance reform?"
Person 2: "I'm not sure. What is it?" 1: "What?! You're not for reform? What kind of troglodyte are you?"
2: "I just don't know anything about it."
1: "I bet you didn't want women to vote either, did you? You just love big-moneyed interests, I can feel it."
2: (uncomfortable) "No, I like women voting. I guess campaign finance reform is good."
Using such well-thought-out arguments, campaign reform advocates have pushed proposals that limit various entities' abilities to show their support or dislike for a particular candidate. Currently, groups can contribute only a limited amount to a particular candidate. As a result, candidates must spend obscene amounts of their time - time that ideally would be spent articulating issues and converting voters - scrimping and begging for contributions.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court, in Buckley v Valeo, created a dichotomy between campaign contributions and expenditures that limits any supposed reform's effectiveness. Until the Court overturns Buckley, any regulations will have to operate with the reality that contributions may be regulated but expenditures may not.
Consequently, self-funded candidates are, in practice, excluded from any regulations contained in the current campaign finance bills. This kind of reform then serves to limit the pool of potential candidates. One would be hard-pressed to argue that rich people, as a class, better reflect the diversity of opinions, cultures, races or any other category.
The aforementioned monopoly most advocates of the current bill have on the notion of reform obscures the kind of solution that actually would improve the political responsiveness between the elected and the electors.
We must eliminate the current limitations on so-called "hard money," the direct contributions to particular candidates. We need to institute impossible-to-elude disclosure requirements, whereby candidates must post all of their contributors and their amounts on some easy-to-access medium. And we have to eliminate soft money, which currently is a way for contributors to elude the disclosure requirements in effect against hard contributions.
This method places the ultimate election decisions in the hands of an important group of people: the voters. They have the option to decide if a six-digit contribution from Evil, Inc. is enough of a reason not to vote for a particular candidate. This system would allow for more less-wealthy individuals to enter a race by soliciting substantial contributions from a small number of contributors. Thus, a more diverse pool of candidates might emerge from a system that allows large donations than from the current system that makes candidates spend a disproportionate amount of time pleading for cash.
The current version of campaign finance reform that will be voted on in the House does little to accomplish the aims of its supporters. It benefits a small cadre of rich individuals and incumbents who already have access to a large network of contributors. Real reform would reduce regulations and place greater trust in the hands of voters.
(Seth Wood's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at swood@cavalierdaily.com.)
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