A Narrow but Important Measure for Reform

The only sight stranger than the Republican House of Representatives passing campaign finance reform legislation was the description of the bill in the press: “overhaul,” “far-reaching” and “sweeping” were the words in the lead of almost every story. It should take nothing away from the extraordinary accomplishment of a bipartisan coalition in the House and a reinvigorated Common Cause to point out that their bill is no overhaul of the laws governing political money, much less a sweeping one. Indeed, its very brilliance is its modesty and focus.

All the bill purports to do is close two loopholes that were blown open in the last four years: the use of “soft money,” that is, money donated directly to political parties that does not come under campaign contribution or spending limits, and the practice of masking campaign ads as discussions of issues in order to evade regulation. The experience of raising and spending money, for most candidates and contributors, would remain untouched.

The measure, written by Reps. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), would ban soft money donations, which were at the heart of fund-raising abuses in the 1996 presidential campaign. The bill’s modest aims and well-targeted solutions to control soft money were essential to its success in the House and to whatever slim but real hope it has in the Senate. Every previous bill has been dragged down by its own complexity, trying to address all the channels through which money enters politics and to induce good behavior through weighty devices like “voluntary spending limits.” But this is the rare bill that can be explained in one sentence: It’s about the inherently corrupting power of $100,000 soft money contributions.

It was only as recent as 1995 when the parties “discovered,” as President Clinton put it in a videotaped briefing to donors, that soft money could be used to buy television ads. And it has only been since about 1994 that political parties and interest groups realized just how freely they could raise and spend money for attack ads simply by leaving the words “vote for” (a particular candidate) off the ads.

Shays-Meehan would turn the clock back five years, but the question is: Will that be far enough? After all, the early 1990s were hardly the Golden Age of American representative democracy, even though there was 75% less soft money.

But the abuses of 1996 weren’t just the latest turn in a long tale of corruption and evasion through which money has found its way into the political system in an attempt to influence legislation. The 1996 abuses opened the door to something very different: individuals, interest groups, corporations and labor unions making contributions big enough that they could go to elected officials later and say, “You owe me.” And there is evidence that some of those debts were repaid, most notably in last year’s tax bill.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, while throwing out most of the post-Watergate reforms, recognized that specific corruption of this kind was a grave enough danger to justify limits on the size of contributions. Those limits held for almost 20 years, and the loopholes that finally shredded them demand the highest priority.

Although Shays-Meehan only addresses the most recent problems, its success should inspire some sense that it is possible to address timeless problems, such as the difficulty that candidates without money have in running for office or the amount of time that candidates devote to raising money. The lesson of Shays-Meehan is that keeping things as simple and as sharp as this bill can attract public enthusiasm and overcome politicians’ resistance to change.

Political scientists Michael Malbin and Thomas L. Gais, writing on changes in state campaign finance laws, infuriated some campaign reformers with the charge that they suffer “a lack of clarity about purpose, a lack of honesty about trade-offs [and] excessive ambitiousness.” It’s an overstatement, but close to the truth.

Shays-Meehan has already shown one thing, even as it stands miles away from becoming law: that a clear purpose, an honest pitch and reasonable ambitions can overcome even such seemingly immovable forces as a House leadership that earlier this year vowed to do everything in its power to prevent the bill from being considered.