Balancing Money in Politics

Two years ago, when the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill was signed into law, it was hailed as a historic victory that would give government back to the people and limit the role of money in politics. “Campaign contributions from a single source that run to the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are not healthy for democracy,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Is that not self-evident?”

But today, money seems just as firmly entrenched in politics as ever. Wealthy corporate executives around the country are competing to become “Rangers” for President Bush’s reelection committee by raising more than $200,000 in $2,000 chunks from friends and business associates. George Soros recently gave $10 million to liberal groups to fund their anti-Bush ads. Wealthy candidates -- the John Corzines and Michael Huffingtons of the world -- are still allowed to self-finance their races if they choose to, in some cases buying their way into serious contention in elections in which they would otherwise stand no chance.

The fact is, McCain-Feingold was a much more modest law than many Americans understood at the time. It had three principal aims. First, the law banned “soft money” contributions to national political parties in an effort to prevent donors from buying access to elected officials. Second, the law tightened the disclosure rules governing ads likely to influence federal elections. Third, the law clamped down on corporations and unions that were using loopholes to avoid long-standing prohibitions on their direct election-related spending.

These are accomplishments, to be sure, but they mostly tinker at the edges of campaign financing. Big money -- whether bundled, donated or shelled out by the candidate himself -- continues to play an enormous and distorting role in the process.

Don’t blame Congress for this one. McCain-Feingold might have been stronger -- and money might have been minimized -- had it not been for the Supreme Court’s views of the 1st Amendment.

In 1976, the Supreme Court held in Buckley vs. Valeo that spending on political campaigns was at the core of the 1st Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and association.

It would be an unconstitutional abridgement of the right to free expression, the court concluded, to limit the amount of money a candidate was allowed to spend on his or her own race, or to limit political spending by individuals acting independently of candidates or their campaigns -- like MoveOn.org does today.

The court held that Congress’ legitimate interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption -- which justified limiting the contributions that individuals and groups could make directly to candidates -- did not outweigh the 1st Amendment right to independent spending or candidate self-financing.

In a particularly crucial part of the decision, the court rejected the idea that Congress had an interest in leveling the political playing field. Promoting political equality by limiting campaign spending, the court said, was an idea “wholly foreign to the 1st Amendment.”

Today, almost 30 years after Buckley, the ruling still holds sway, and until the court is willing to reconsider it, significant changes to our campaign finance rules are impossible.

But in a recent opinion, the court hinted that it might be ready to revisit the question. This would be welcome, provided the court balances important interests on both sides of the constitutional equation.

Leveling the playing field is not the bad idea that the court seemed to think it was in Buckley.

Most Americans today accept the one person, one vote ideal, and, consistent with that ideal, it is simply wrong that economic power should be so easily translated into political power. Wealth should not determine one’s ability to run for office, nor should it affect the outcome of close election campaigns.

On the other hand, spending limits can pose dangers because they allow incumbent politicians to protect themselves, in the name of reform, from honest competition. For this reason, the court should approve spending limits only when they are coupled with ample public financing of campaigns to assure a rich and robust debate among many interested parties.

Imagine, for example, if we eliminated all private funds from our federal elections. Instead, bona fide candidates would receive free air time on television. And each voter would be given $100 in publicly financed voucher dollars to distribute to candidates, parties, and interest groups in each election cycle.

The debate would be vigorous, the loopholes would be closed, the power of wealth would be minimized and our democracy would be enhanced. That doesn’t sound “wholly foreign to the 1st Amendment” to me.