A Shameful Failure in the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says he pulled the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill from further floor consideration on Tuesday because there was no “consensus” on how to proceed with the measure. Maybe. But there were 53 senators who showed in a procedural vote that they wanted to end the corrupting practice of allowing unlimited “soft money” contributions in national political campaigns. In this case, sadly, the majority counted for nothing.

Needed were 60 votes to prevent the filibuster threatened by those who wanted either to bury the whole bill or keep certain amendments out of it. The bill’s sponsors speak bravely of trying to revive it. But unless there’s a firestorm of public anger over the Senate’s failure, that prospect looks bleak indeed.

Meanwhile, in an almost novelistic paradox, the strongest case for why campaign finance reform is so desperately needed continued to be aired just a few yards from the Senate chamber. There, in the latest chapter of a complex story, the committee investigating Democratic fund-raising activities for last year’s campaign was trying to grasp how President Clinton’s staff failed to discover until last Wednesday the existence of at least 44 videotapes of fund-raising events at the White House. Subpoenas for all tapes involving campaign financing were issued months ago; the White House response was that no such tapes existed. An oversight, a bureaucratic error, “just an accident,” as Clinton claims? The odor of a cover-up grows sharper with each new denial, each implausible explanation, each increasingly feeble claim of good faith cooperation.

Republicans are demanding that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno appoint a special counsel to expose the full facts on illicit fund-raising, something the administration seems incapable of doing itself. At the same time, it is hypocrisy to pretend that the administration’s misdeeds are anything other than the ugly evidence of a far larger systemic problem. Money from big donors, raised with few scruples and spent with too few controls, drips like a poison into the political process. This week the Senate had a chance to provide an antidote. It waffled, irresponsibly, indefensibly, shamefully.