April 2, 2000

Campaign Finance Reform Creating Desperate Converts

The road to Tarsus is getting crowded with converts to campaign finance reform -- the latest being Vice-president Al Gore who admits he is an “imperfect messenger” for the cause.

Gore adopted the McCain reform bill after a vision inspired by the conviction last week of his old fund-raising buddy Maria Hsia. She was found guilty of channeling illegal Chinese political money to Democrats through illegal Buddhist Temple shills.

Hsia faces 25 years in Federal prison for her attempt to buy influence through Gore. Disclosures during her trial were better than a rock pillow for his Epiphany of light.

Gore now says he realizes it was wrong for him to encourage a $600,000 Chinese contribution, but the GOP devil made him do it “in order to compete.”

Says the veep, “I understand the doubts about whether I personally am serious on campaign reform, but the real wounds will be to our democracy itself unless we address this problem.”

Gore has two solutions to campaign fund abuses:

* Adopt McCain’s bill banning “soft money” by wealthy people, corporations and special interest committees – except labor unions.

* Establish a “democracy endowment” of $7.1 billion to finance political campaigns by income tax credits – i.e. by taxpayers.

Both plans are no go -- first of all because Gore’s hands are muddy. His claiming the campaign reform issue is like Lizzie Borden pleading for mercy because she’s an orphan.

More to the point is U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The court decided in *it Buckley v. Valeo (1976) *io that campaign contributions are “free speech” protected by the First Amendment.

This view was expanded by *it Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Commission (1996) *io. The justices struck down limitations on independent expenditures by political parties.

We got ourselves in a pickle after Watergate by trying to sanitize politics. Congress hoped to hobble politics with limits on who could spend how much. To compensate, Congress launched public financing of campaigns through a one-dollar check-off (since raised to $3) on income tax payments. Tellingly, the number of check-offs decline each year.

A Federal Election Commission had to be organized, of course, to enforce new rules. However, technology of television created real-time problems faster than new solutions could be devised.

In retrospect, President Nixon’s transgressions were patty- cake compared to President Clinton’s abuses of power. Not to mention the latter’s hanky-panky in the Oval Office pantry.

Before we can cope with the pace and intensity of politics these days, Americans must recognize reality. Politics always has been rough and negative. In a free country, it cannot be tamed.

The immediacy of television requires instant response. The high cost of TV turns candidates into shameless solicitors. Yet, reformers would limit contributions while the Constitution prohibits limitations on fund raising.

The proposal to finesse this contradiction by public financing – and methods of making funds distribution “fair” – is unworkable.

Only so-called “independent” voters think distributing tax dollars to candidates is peachy keen. No-party swing voters usually decide elections, but they don’t put their money where their mouth is. Without strong political parties, governments fade into dictatorships.

Committed taxpayers will not consent to part of their money being used to promote candidates of the other party they are trying to defeat.

Fat-cat donors will not contribute to a campaign endowment with out recognition by candidates they want to influence. Better to give to a deductible charity that will say nice things about you.

We could allay some candidate desperation for money by increasing the amount of individual contributions to a single candidate -- from the present $1,000 to $10,000.

In addition, we could permit unlimited “soft” money to political parties. The parties could spend the money as they wished, answerable to registered party members. One of the reasons we are in the mess today is the rise of personality candidates and the decline of party discipline.

Most important of all would be instant disclosure of political contributions via the internet. Perhaps computers are the antidote to boob tubes.

Some political contributors operate in the dark. They don’t want to be publicly identified. Some candidates are ashamed of certain benefactors. Let sunshine in, and candidates will hold their opponents’ feet to the fire faster and more surely than any collection of bureaucrats.

As for the high costs of campaigning, remember that TV stations, radio broadcasters, newspapers, printers and skimmer- hat manufacturers gotta eat too.

PARTING SHOTS

Lizzie Borden’s advice: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.”

* * *

Fr. Daniel Coughlin has been appointed the first Roman Catholic chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. On his opening morning, Fr. Coughlin strode to the rostrum, looked around the chamber and prayed for the country.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun-Herald columnist and can be reached at linwms@lindseywilliams.org.