As one of my first posts at the now-defunct Pushback.org, I wondered aloud about whether or not campaign finance reform was worth pursuing. By that point, it was pretty clear that Barack Obama was well on his way to breaking all fundraising records, and more importantly, he did so in a way that made campaign finance law basically irrelevant.
With that in mind, I can’t say I’ll be too troubled if the Supreme Court overturns part or all of McCain-Feingold:
A quirky case about a slashing documentary attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton would not seem to be the most obvious vehicle for a fundamental re-examination of the interplay between the First Amendment and campaign finance laws.
But by the end of an exceptionally lively argument at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, it seemed at least possible that five justices were prepared to overturn or significantly limit parts of the court’s 2003 decision upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which regulates the role of money in politics.
Several of the court’s more conservative justices reacted with incredulity to a series of answers from a government lawyer about the scope of Congressional authority to limit political speech. The lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress has the power to ban political books, signs and Internet videos, if they are paid for by corporations and distributed not long before an election.
While I’m pretty agnostic about the court’s decision either way, I do think that will be a unique opportunity to drastically reform campaign finance laws if McCain-Feingold (or parts of it) are overturned. Let me explain: at this point, there’s little chance that the Court will allow huge restrictions on fundraising or spending. In politics at least, money will continue to flow like water and there’s not much we can do to change that fact. So, instead of looking for ever more convoluted ways to restrict the flow of money, it might be a better idea to design a system with complete transparency in mind. I’m not as concerned with how much money a given candidate has as I am with where that money is coming from. A system where donations are unrestricted but each and every donation is released publicly and easily available seems preferable to me than what we have now, which is both arbitrary and lacks effective transparency (it’s kind of difficult to find donor information). Oh, and a more robust system of public financing would be nice too.
I’m still a big proponent for campaign finance reform, but you’re definitely right about McCain-Feingold–that’s not the right way to go about it. Incidentally, I’d be interested to hear what you think of this new proposal. I haven’t looked at it that closely yet, but I’m interested.
I think you’re probably overrating the benefits of transparency some. A lot of that information is already out there and is diligently compiled by watch dog groups. I’m not saying we shouldn’t improve accessibility by any means, but if pointing out your opponents donors could consistently win campaigns, then even now it would be a larger part of existing battles.
I personally stand by McCain-Feingold. The Obama approach had its groundwork laid when the party moved away from large soft money donations to seeking more from small donors. Admittedly, now that the switchover has happened, I don’t have that strong feelings about this particular case.
Predictably, I’d tend to think that the robust public financing is probably the better way to go. My favorite proposal has a few variants but is basically either small donor matching or giving people what amount to gift certificates for campaign donations (think that proposal was called ‘patriot dollars’). Either way, you avoid some of the complaints about financing causes you don’t support and do a better job of handling third parties.