Reform That’s the Key to Washington : Don’t abandon federal campaign reform

“Lord, grant me chastity,” St. Augustine prayed, “but not now.” “Lord, grant me campaign reform,” Congress prays, “but not now. I need one more election under the old rules.”

Whether the prayer of the corrupt congressional heart will be answered may depend less on the Lord than on the President. Will President Clinton, who campaigned on a platform in which campaign reform was a key plank, do the right thing? Or will he do the prudent thing?

The prudent thing, a tempter with money on his breath whispers into the President’s left ear, is to hoard that tiny, precious dowry of honeymoon goodwill. “Spend it where it counts, Bill” the crooning, savvy voice coaxes. “Spend it on health care, spend it on your economic package. Blow it on a non-starter like campaign reform and your honeymoon is really over. Do yourself a favor.”

The right thing, a better angel speaks into the President’s right ear, is to worry less about a honeymoon with Congress and more about a stable relationship with the voters. “Mr. President,” the plain-spoken messenger begins, “remember gridlock? God did not create gridlock when he created Republicans and Democrats. Gridlock results from the separate imprisonment of each legislator to a different set of bankrolling special interests. Free the legislators, and they will free you. Leave them trapped in gridlock, and their gridlock will trap you too.”

Odd language for an angel, but then for most angels English is a second language. Language aside, the better angel has the better long-term strategy. Bill Clinton’s victory stood on two legs. The economy was one. Change was the other. And change in Washington means a reduction in the buying and selling of legislation or it means nothing.

Clinton is not, repeat not, in trouble because two weeks after his inauguration he has not placed a full-blown health plan, a comprehensive economic package and the rest of some mythical 100-days package before Congress. Here, if anywhere, the gulf between the realism of the people and the restlessness of the media yawns before us. Every administration, in its opening days, seems slow, and that was so for Ronald Reagan’s Administration as much as any. Read the clips.

Clinton will be in trouble if signs of business-as-usual blossom into a revised definition of how much--that is, of course, how little--real change he represents. The Ronald H. Brown confirmation flap was one such worrisome sign. Backing out on campaign reform would be the largest imaginable such sign.

The basic requirements--funding limits, an end to loopholes that permit “soft money” contributed to parties to escape candidate limits, and reasonable public funding for those who accept the funding limits--are known and have been known for years.

The President needs to preserve his reputation as an honest man prepared to put the national interest first more than he needs to preserve goodwill with the Kings of the Hill. The same people elect them who elected him.