Campaign Finance Reform:
A free speech issue really worth fighting about

By Robert Harrington

Why Democrats love campaign finance reform
Campaign Finance Reform - a skeptic's view
Unremitting attack on free speech
A real threat to the First Amendment

Why Democrats and their friendly press love
campaign finance reform
April 1, 1998

The San Jose Mercury News ran a fawning piece on California Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher on March 31 that illustrates the reason Democrats and the leftish press love campaign finance reform. The front-page article (continued on back, covering almost half of it), by MN Staff Writer Mary Anne Ostrom, could not have been better for Tauscher if it had been written by her campaign staff. Ironically, the headline article just above the Tauscher piece was about the action of the GOP to kill campaign finance reform ("No reform of election financing").

Consider what it means for Democrats and their allies in the press:

1. Democrats enjoy a friendly press, much of which acts as an extension of the DNC campaign staff.
2. Republicans, who have to pay for their advertising, will be restricted in how much space they can buy.
3. The press, which is not restricted in any way by the "reforms," gains even stronger dominance on their megaphone.

With these things going for it, it's easy to understand their enthusiasm. What grates is their smarmy pretense that it's for the good of the country.

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Campaign Finance Reform - a skeptic's view

Excuse me, but I'm skeptical about all this prattle about campaign finance reform. Let's talk about this:

1. It is good that the president acknowledged that "Mistakes were made," but the public deserves to know exactly what happened. How did the DNC and the White House get tangled up with all that foreign money? What went on in these "coffees"? Was the WhoDB (White House Office Data Base) abused? Were there massive violations of the Hatch Act? Was there influence peddling? If we don't have answers to these questions, how will we know if any proposed solution will prevent it from happening again?

2. What are we to make of the Gingrich Standard? Will it be applied to the hundreds of non-profit organizations also on the periphery if not in the middle of politics? Should it apply to the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, to name a few, which supply money to left-wing advocacy groups that are up to their ears in politics? Does it have significance for labor unions, which are blithely ignoring the Beck decision (with the full acquiescence of the Clinton administration) that requires them to refund dues spent on politics if requested by members?

3. "Free TV"? Check you pockets. What they're really talking about is shifting the cost from one set of pockets to another. Broadcasters and advertisers are not going to eat this; they'll pass it on to you and me. This kind of thing is normally called a "tax."

4. It is silly to think that the money chasing leverage will just go away. In an era in which the Supreme Court defines flag burning as "speech," it takes very little imagination for fat cats to find ways to use their money for whatever they wish to promote. If they succeed, which seems inevitable, the only effect of the money for TV that is extracted from the public will be to increase the total.

5. Any form of public financing, direct or indirect, requires a mechanism for allocating the goods. This is not a detail; it is crucial. Rule-based systems have to allocate on the basis of likely result. In other words, they involve forecasting the results of the democratic process. Isn't there a powerful arrogance in that? They are bound to favor incumbents and stifle newcomers. If you're unknown, you can't get money; if you can't get money, you can't become known. This is true now, but public financing inscribes it in the law.

Finally, we should recognize two basics:

(1) The root of the problem is the concentration of power in Washington. The Federal Government is a massive engine for dispensing benefits to favored groups for an infinite variety of supposed social goods. Examples abound. The tax code, the thickness of which is measured in feet, is riddled with favoritism. As long as this exists, there will be a market, and buyers, and sellers.

(2) If we try, there's a good possibility of electing honest politicians; if we don't pay attention, there's no chance, and no laws or reforms will save us.

March 4, 1997

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Unremitting attack on free speech

I am dumbfounded, so to speak, at the eagerness with which people are embracing the unremitting attack on free speech called "campaign finance reform" and their pathetic attempts at sarcasm in the "money is speech" jokes.

The most obvious example of free speech infringement is the aggravation about what constitutes permissible "issue ads." It is clearly an argument about their content, and that, Charlie Brown, is what free speech is all about. Consider:

• Under the law, present and proposed, anyone can run an ad of a blank page, no matter how much you spend or how you pay for it. But if you put "Vote for Candidate X" on it, you may be violating the law. So they're mostly right: money is speech only in the special case of political speech, which is too important to let people run amuck with in a completely uncontrolled manner.
• Newspapers are highly sensitive and protective about their free speech rights, and any hint that restrictions on them might be implemented in the name of campaign finance reform would rightly be met with loud screams. They regularly exercise their rights in the form of voting recommendations, but consider this: If a private organization bought space and said the same thing that might be in an editorial on voting recommendations, it might be a violation of campaign finance law. It's no wonder that media people are so blasé about this; their voices will only be louder.
• Implementation of the laws is very awkward. The only way you find out that you may have violated the law is to have the Federal Election Commission charge you after the fact. This introduces a great deal of uncertainty for groups running ads, and usually by that time the FEC gets around to it the election is long past and the damage is done. To reduce the uncertainty and time lag, we might as well have the FEC review ads before they run. While they're at it, they could also just black out the parts that cause problems. Now, if you call this censorship, that's exactly right, but it's only a different way of doing what we're now.

This censorship is embraced with great enthusiasm by modern-day liberals. These are the same people who go into an uncontrollable rage at the suggestion that something be done about the hard-core pornography furnished to children in our libraries. Go figure.

Morgan Hill Times, December 9, 1997

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A real threat to the First Amendment: Campaign Finance Reform

Those arguing the library's side of the pornography debate say that measures to suppress pornography threaten First Amendment rights, but mostly that comes down to quibbling about whether a certain item is pornography or art. It is a shame to get caught up in these squabbles when we have truly serious First Amendment issues before us.

One of those is the debate about campaign finance reform. Ironically, those arguing most strenuously in favor of the rights of pornographers are by and large the same people arguing that we should impose more controls on political campaign finance.

Most of the complaints have to do with "soft money," which came into being as a result of the Buckley v. Valeo case in 1976. In that case, the court threw out a portion of the campaign finance law Congress passed in 1974. In so doing, it said, among other things: "So long as persons and groups eschew expenditures that, in express terms advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate, they are free to spend as much as they want to promote the candidate and his views." This money they are "free to spend" without limit is now called "soft money," and it's out of control for the simple reason that Congress's attempts to control it are unconstitutional. Specifically, they violate the First Amendment.

Now, here is a First Amendment issue worth fighting about. Protection of the right of political speech is the central purpose of the free speech provision of the First Amendment. The claims of pornographers and flag-burners may be arguable, but those issues are small potatoes indeed compared to attempts to suppress rights to talk about political matters. We've come a long way from the time when certain colonists thought the appropriate way to express their political message was to dump tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773.

There are plenty of people who disagree with the Buckley decision. Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal called it "deeply flawed." I see a column on the subject by Molly Ivins almost weekly. Sen. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is sponsoring a bill to outlaw soft money.

On the other side is none other than the ACLU, an organization with which I rarely agree. Also, Congressional Democratic Leader Dick Gephart, to his credit, agrees that it would be necessary to amend the constitution to get rid of soft money, and he wants to do just that. Messing with the First Amendment is the last thing I think we should do, but at least Gephart is forthright about it.

Soft money is said to be evil because it buys influence and distorts elections. One answer to these contentions is that such is part of the price of living in a constitutional democracy.

On another level, however, my answer is two parts:

1. The underlying assumption of the corrupting influence of soft money is that politicians are dishonest. Undoubtedly many are, but is it not the better solution to weed out the dishonest ones? The cynicism here is well illustrated by the statistics on President Clinton: he has a 60 percent approval rating while something like 45 percent don't consider him trustworthy. What can the (at least) 5 percent who don't trust him but still approve be thinking?
2. Just as fundamental is the wildly excess power we've allowed to be accumulated in Washington. Perhaps the grossest example is the outrageousness of the tax code, which is a massive engine for passing out favors based on politics. The basic point here is that it wouldn't be such a problem if politicians didn't have so much to sell.

A favorite tactic of those who oppose action to suppress pornography in libraries is to raise the specter of censorship. What, then, would they call it if it was against the law, for example, to air ads which call a certain politician an "out-of-touch, liberal big spender"? That's what the Wisconsin Election Board contends, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is censorship.

Morgan Hill Times, August 26, 1997

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