The Watergate scandals of the 1970s caused Congress to clamp ceilings on political contributions. But, in reality, the sky remains the limit because political parties can raise unrestricted funds, purportedly for voter education and the like.
Clever ways are being found to use that money to promote candidates. In 1996, the parties raised $265 million in such "soft money," triple what they collected in 1992.So turn your mind back to the 1996 Republican National Convention. Imagine what might have happened had President Clinton made it known that he would be interrupting his vacation for a political announcement.
Under such a scenario, the president might have said:
"I call upon Senator Dole and the Republicans to turn away all `soft money' in the coming campaign. There's too much cash floating around in politics nowadays. It breeds cynicism over the way our laws are made. Let us compete using only the $125 million the voters provided us via the tax check-off plan."
The real clincher for Clinton would have been to eschew "soft money" even if Dole balked. The bored press gangs encamped in San Diego would have come alive: Every Republican politician in town would have been called upon to respond to the Clinton gambit.
That dream would have been Dole's nightmare. Quite probably, Clinton would have beaten Dole with even more votes than he got without such a ban. Most certainly, he wouldn't have lost control of his campaign as reporters plumbed the campaign finance scandal.
Now turn your mind forward to Inauguration Day 2001 - the moment that Al Gore has set as his goal in life. Will Gore be taking the oath of office on the Capitol grounds? Not likely so long as vice president's ambitions are held hostage to his dubious role in collecting "soft money" from the rich.
Character is what you do when nobody's looking: the 86 fund-raising calls Gore acknowledges having made from the White House - up from the "few" he could recall last March - would not have come to light had Congress not gone after the records.
Gore has some ideas on how the nation should be governed in the next century. He that he must raise millions more to put those ideas across and keep his rivals at bay.
But the press, having been duped in the past election cycle, stands poised to pursue its own agenda - while ignoring Gore's issues as so much background noise. Whenever Gore enters a hotel ballroom the media will dig into who's paying the tab and what they want of the government.
The only way for Gore to spring the trap he has set himself is to do what Clinton should have done the last time around: Impose a unilateral ban on "soft money." Gore, like Richard Nixon and Clinton before him, needs to learn that more can be less.
Nixon learned his lesson when the $100 bills found on one of the Watergate burglars were traced to his 1972 campaign funds. Nixon was forced from office when a tape showed he had known all along that money was used to fund the break-in and the failed cover-up.