Time to clear the ruins of reform

The campaign finance reformers are right about one thing: The system stinks. The regulatory regime imposed after Watergate has broken down; it is a failure, and it has to go.

Where the reformers go wrong is in prescribing more of the same. As bad as the system is, it can get a lot worse. It will if we do more of the things that make the current system so rotten.

One of the key problems, reformers say, is "soft money," or unregulated contributions to political parties. Specifically, the problem is that these donations are unlimited.

Hence, while an individual can give George W. Bush only $1,000 per election, rich folks - not to mention corporations and labor unions - can (and do) write five- and six-figure checks to the Republican National Committee. This money is not supposed to directly aid a particular candidate, but it often does.

The result is what the activist group Common Cause calls an "unprecedented orgy of special-interest influence and access buying" at the party conventions, and presumably other places politicians gather.

The cornerstone of the much-praised McCain-Feingold bill - the reform measure that provided the basis of ex-presidential candidate John McCain's claim to moral rectitude - is a ban on soft money. Common Cause, which is to political fundraising what the Women's Christian Temperance Union once was to booze, calls this "the first step in fixing the broken campaign finance system."

The point is to make every contribution subject to limits and thereby limit the influence of the wealthy. Certainly political power ought to be equally distributed among citizens. That is the point of elections. But it does not follow that political influence - the ability to persuade - must also be equal.

Indeed, the idea is the opposite of democratic. Free speech does not mean that either everyone speaks or no one does. Freedom of the press does not mean everyone gets a press.

Yes, money is speech. Campaigns turn the former into the latter as surely as a freezer turns water into ice. No money means no ads, no travel, no bumper stickers. For a candidate running for office, this is as good as being silenced.

When we say, as the Constitution does, that speech must be "free," we mean it should be unfettered, not without cost. Speech in a modern society costs money whether it is in print or over the airwaves, and more money equals more speech. It makes no sense to try to enrich our democratic debate by impoverishing the debaters.

Yet this is what our campaign finance laws, with their contribution limits, try to do, and because they fail, reformers say: Try harder.

There is no question that soft money subverts the purpose of previous reforms. But that is not surprising. In a society where campaigns are important, money will flow into them. If it does not go directly to the candidates, it will go to the parties. If not to the parties, it will go to some new body beyond the reach of regulations.

That leaves two choices: Build a governmental Leviathan that can restrict everyone's political speech, or accept that "special interests" are going to find a way to support candidates who support them.

The current system serves only to increase the influence of so-called special interests (are they different from ordinary interests?) by taking campaigns out of the hands of candidates. When candidates are denied the right to make their own case somebody will make it for them. Those somebodies are the people with money.

That is why Steve Forbes ran for president. If he had been allowed to write a $5 million check to, say, Elizabeth Dole, the Republican presidential field would have been improved by the addition of one qualified candidate and the subtraction of one rich joker.

Such is the state of earlier campaign finance reforms. They don't stop what they're supposed to stop, and they worsen the problems they're supposed to solve.

They are already in shambles. It is time to clear away the ruins and let the market in ideas be free.