Utah Sen. Robert Bennett's proposed amendment this week to the much-debated campaign finance reform bill exposed the whole effort for the charade that it is.
Like it or not, campaign ads are speech, and speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Wealthy candidates always will have access to as much of this speech as they want, while a cash-poor challenger who may be rich in ideas has to rely on donations from people and corporations who believe in his or her cause. If those donations are restricted, incumbents, and the wealthy, will benefit.
Bennett's amendment would have lifted donation limits to candidates who are battling against self-funded millionaires. Without this, he argued, upstarts would have little chance. It was hard to refute this logic, but to accept the amendment would be to gut the purpose of the bill. In the end, the Senate reworked the amendment and was expected to pass one that would increase donation limits to allow candidates to meet, but not exceed, expenditures by wealthy opponents.
Again, this is another silly charade. Wealthy incumbents hold more advantages than just the size of their bank accounts. They have name recognition. Why should a challenger not be allowed to raise whatever money is necessary to counter that advantage?
The campaign finance bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., is seriously flawed. It would outlaw so-called soft money contributions and strictly limit campaign donations in a vain effort to keep special interests from dominating the nation's political landscape. It also would limit the types of ads people could buy as an election nears. But keeping moneyed interests from politicians is like keeping water from fish. The two are bound to find each other. The only credible way to look out for the public's interests is to require a full, complete and timely disclosure of all soft and hard money contributions and expenditures.
The public's enemy is not the size of contributions coming to candidates. Nor is it necessarily the interest groups themselves. Most candidates attract support from these groups based on their own political ideologies, the same ideologies that attract voters.
No, the enemy is secrecy. Soft money is offensive because no one knows where it comes from and how it flows to candidates.
Instead of shedding light on the process, McCain-Feingold would try to limit and curtail it, cutting some parts of American society out of the political process. An amendment added this week also would control the amounts television stations could charge politicians for commercials. In the end, most of these efforts would help incumbents and hurt challengers who are struggling to be heard, and they would do little to make effective campaigning any cheaper.
As history has shown, the political process always will find a way around any obstacles thrown in its path.