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Real Campaign Finance Reform
I am astonished at the way otherwise intelligent and dedicated people can be dense as ironwood on certain topics. The dynamics of campaign finance are not that hard to fathom, yet we have a bevy of "concerned" politicians led by John McCain and Russ Feingold who insist on pursuing a quixotic effort to "reform" the system that illustrates a profound obtuseness. Their premise seems to be that bad people (lobbyists) are allowed to corrupt good people (politicians), and hence betray the American citizenry, because there aren't enough rules in place to stop them. And so they proceed to suggest tinkering with the already arcane and bizarre rules thinking that they may actually accomplish something. They can't. The reason they can't is that they are starting from an incorrect and silly premise.
Read the following and understand it well, it tells you everything you need to know about the problems with campaign financing: Money doesn't create power. Money follows power, and Big Money follows Big Power.
Mainstream approaches to campaign finance reform say that power follows, and is corrupted by, money. Hence the need is to control the money side of the equation. Control the money coming into the system and control the opportunity for corruption. The reality is that the value of a dollar spent on a candidate is completely dependent on the results it can deliver. In the second half of the 20th century the Federal Government has amassed an enormous amout of concentrated power, arrogating unto itself unconstitutional levels of control over business, commerce, education and myriad other aspects of our lives. Much of the modern governmental enterprise, remarked upon by astute observers from H.L. Mencken to P.J. O'Rourke, is an effort to shape the nature of that power to your advantage. Government power can literally make or break business and individuals. The effort to control and direct this power, actively or passively, is what drives much if not most of campaign contributions.
The corruption of modern democracy inheres in the power, not in the money. One would think that Lord Acton has been quoted enough for this to sink in. With the amount of power concentrated in Washington, the flow of money and solicitation into Washington is as inevitable and unstoppable as the tides. The first effort at campaign finance reform after Watergate didn't "reform" anything, as Jim Buckley so ably points out in a recent National Review article. That initial effort plugged a few holes, but the money simply found alternate routes. If McCain & Co. succeed in plugging a few more holes, new, more creative and harder to spot channels will be found.
The only hope for true campaign finance reform is to reduce the value of the dollars flowing in by reducing the concentration of government power. Send the power back home and the money will follow it. I realize that is not going to happen tommorrow, but until it does the best we can do is throw out the rules we have in place, shine as much light on the process as possible, and turn our attention to things we may actually have some control over.