Political Rx: Cash

News Item: If Congress outlaws “soft money” campaign contributions and tries to silence special interests before the next federal elections, the National Rifle Assn. vows to launch a vessel and steam into international waters. From there, “The Good Ship NRA” will beam radio messages back to land, warning Americans about which politicians are out to strip them of their constitutional entitlement to keep guns.

In the land of the Bill of Rights, the right to speak out is as difficult to thwart as the right to bear arms. Just read Amendments I and II, then think about the passions of true believers.

So it’s not surprising that political reform is being threatened even before it’s enacted. That’s because Congress, once again, is tackling matters from the wrong end.

I say this having watched, close up, the last great round of campaign finance reform in the nation. I recall sharing in the wave of hope that swept the country and then feeling the incremental disappointment of realizing that far less was achieved than promised.

It was the mid-1970s and I was a reporter in Sacramento, where two guys named Brown delivered lessons to last a lifetime. Jerry Brown was governor of California. His election platform was built on a promise to clean up politics. Among other things, he pushed to have campaign donations reported to the public. Voters, at last, would be allowed to “follow the money.” That was sure to break the cycle of institutional corruption. Politicians would be reluctant to favor donors, or favor them too blatantly, now that the financing of campaigns would occur in the sunlight of public scrutiny. So the thinking went. And the idea spread across the country.

“Bull,” snorted Willie Brown, then a cocky assemblyman from San Francisco. And that turned out to be pretty much on the mark.

Today, a generation later, newspapers are laden with boilerplate, explaining exactly which contributors benefit and by how much, from the deeds of the politicians they bankrolled into office. But disclosure has had a wholly unintended result. It did not clean up politics as much as deepen our cynicism about it. Now we expect the worst from elected officials because the evidence of collusion with contributors is put in front of our faces every day.

I owe much of my love of politics to California’s two Browns. Jerry, now the mayor of Oakland, taught me about ideas and idealism. Willie, now the mayor of San Francisco, taught me realism.

Jerry Brown’s lesson is that we should keep striving. We must applaud those in Congress who are now wrestling with another round of reform, trying to hold back the flood tide of so-called soft money. Urge them on. They deserve our gratitude for trying.

But I think Willie Brown’s lesson is the more important: that no matter what law emerges, money remains the lifeblood of politics. Money is how politicians and do-gooders and scoundrels and knuckleheads and everyone else reaches across the vast sprawl of the United States to voters. Money wins elections. Money makes friends.

The better approach, I think, is to pump more cash into politics, not less. Yours. And mine. Lots of it.

It would take more daring than imagination, but the system of campaign financing could be revolutionized--truly upended--in one step. Make it so we outspend the narrow interests and the fat cats.

No, I’m not speaking of traditional public financing of campaigns. That’s one of the most feckless ideas of our era. Count me among the millions of Americans who don’t want my sweat-labor (such as it is) financing half the gasbags I see aspiring to office. You want to lead, pal, earn it.

No, there is a free-market way. The idea is simple: A $2 tax rebate for every $1 in individual campaign contributions up to $50. You choose whom to support, if anyone. Spread it around, $5 here, $15 there. Your $50 total contribution is rewarded with a $100 federal tax rebate.

In other words, the tax law would provide an incentive for people to invest in what has evolved into the foundation of electoral politics: campaign fund-raising. This is public financing but of a far different stripe. Candidates would have to earn these dollars by the strength of their ideas and the cut of their character, not from closed-door promises at plutocrat fund-raisers. Who would set the nation’s agenda then?

The consequences could be huge: If two-thirds of the nation’s voters made contributions, rank-and-file Americans would swamp the spending of special interests. The last round of federal elections cost perhaps $3 billion--from combined special interests, federal matching funds and rank-and-file contributions, hard money and soft. If 70 million voters each donated $50, they would have generated another $3.5 billion, giving the citizenry the loudest voice of all, which, of course, is only our due.

Rein them in as we can, as Jerry might say. Then outgun them, right, Willie? As for George W. Bush, what better way of priming the economy, and our spirits, than a tax cut that brings government home?

The best thing Ralph Nader did last year was charge supporters a donation to attend a rally. He proved that politics really can be engaging if the cause is right and you feel your participation matters.

As that iconoclastic old writer Ed Abbey used to say, the cure for what ails democracy is more democracy.