Why Veto This Terrific Reform? : Electorate is cynical now--don’t make it worse

Some time before the end of this month, the most important campaign reform legislation in a generation will be offered to President Bush for his signature. Bush has sworn to veto the reform. In our judgment, a veto would harm both parties and, worse, would wreck the best chance the country has to turn the current, almost suicidal pessimism of the electorate into a renewal of hope.

The real political news of the last six months has not been the rising and falling and rising fortunes of Bill Clinton or Jerry Brown or Pat Buchanan or George Bush. It has been the falling, falling and further falling level of popular interest in the nation’s electoral process itself. The cure for democracy cannot be less democracy; but less democracy is just what you get when so many eligible voters just give up and stay home. Past a certain point, non-participation becomes a crisis of legitimacy for American democracy itself.

ROOT OF EVIL: The candidates accuse one another of bringing the nation to this crisis, but notice how the accusation is framed. The term of accusatory art is special interests as in “my opponent is captive to the special interests.” What makes special interests bad, of course, is that they are pursued against the general interest, but how does a candidate fall into this special-interest captivity?

The bars of the cage are made of money. Buying votes is bribery, and illegal, but buying access, buying influence, buying returned phone calls--all this is “politics as usual.” What the candidates say about their opponents’ guilt is the unpleasant truth. What they imply about their own innocence is a stinking lie, and that’s a good part of the reason Americans are tuning out their own political system. The whole thing is starting to stink.

A generation ago, with the foul aroma of Watergate still on our presidential politics, the United States instituted limits on presidential fund raising. The reform consisted, in broad terms, of a limit on contributions by individuals and political action committees joined to a program of public funding. As a result of this reform, President Bush has received a total of $145 million in public funds for his campaigns for the vice presidency and the presidency.

ROOT OF REFORM: The legislation the President has sworn to veto extends this reform to House and Senate races. The reform does not, as he claims, favor incumbents over challengers. Under the present, unreformed system, incumbents raise vastly more money than challengers. A Times study found, moreover, that only 80 House candidates in 1990 spent more than the $600,000 limit that the reform permits. The reform does not increase taxes. Though it limits PAC contributions it does not eliminate them. It improves on the reform of presidential campaign spending by strictly limiting so-called soft-money contributions to political parties.

It is, in short, the best chance the country has had in years to pull itself back from the brink of political despair. President Bush should not just sign this legislation, he should applaud it. We are cheered by the rumor that a group of junior Republicans may soon give him the same advice.