Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 22, 1991 TAG: 9103220874
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By STEPHANIE D. MOUSSALLI
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But attacks on political liberty in a free society are almost never so direct. Instead, they come in the form of apparently reasonable solutions to perceived problems, and they are proposed by responsible people.
Most proposed regulations on campaign financing are just such attacks. Although born of respectable motives, in response to understandable fears, they are a restriction of free political expression nevertheless.
Does the campaign-finance system need to be more heavily regulated? An examination of the available research in this area shows that campaign funding has a rather small - and seldom decisive - net effect on the outcomes of elections and the direction of legislative votes. My study, "Campaign Finance Reform: The Case for Deregulation," examines all the major evidence from past campaigns.
Although the news is full of reports of suspicious-sounding campaign contributions, few voters are simply passive victims of expensive political campaigns, and politicians rarely "sell" themselves to the highest bidder.
Nevertheless, fear of the undue influence of the rich has produced the Federal Election Campaign Acts and their clones at the state and local levels. Donating more than $1,000 per federal election to your favorite candidate is now a crime, and failing to submit the proper paperwork when you make a donation can land you in court for years, if not actually in jail.
It is true that many private donors have tried to buy politicians in this country over the last 200 years. Sometimes they have succeeded. Sometimes politicians have made "sales offers" that private donors could not refuse. That is why the public tolerates today's talk of campaign-funding reforms.
But a free political system will naturally restrain a dishonest politician. If he throws principle to the winds and merely promotes the interests of his contributors, more than one buyer will jump into that "market," forcing him to represent several different groups. In other words, he will respond to a fairly wide sample of his constituency, precisely what he is supposed to do. If the contributors to his campaign have a bad reputation, well-funded opponents will attack from all directions, and maybe bring him down.
When reformers talk about eliminating fat-cat contributions, special-interest influence, or million-dollar spending, it sounds great. But they fail to mention the star actor in this reform play - the government. As an institution, government will tend to act in a manner that preserves and expands its power. Surely, even the citizen who is most trusting of government bureaucracies and most suspicious of the influence of private wealth must look askance at the idea of the government controlling the money for its own re-election.
Actually, the government already controls quite a few of the campaign purse strings in elections. Currently, reformers are debating how many more purse strings the government ought to seize. The major remaining obstacle is the First Amendment.
The First Amendment protects what are called "independent expenditures." These occur when Jane or John Q. Public, rising in outrage against one candidate or in passionate support of another, buys advertising independently, without coordinating the action with anyone's campaign. In 1971 and 1974, Congress tried to control such expenditures but had to back down when the Supreme Court pointed out that the main purpose of the First Amendment is to prevent such a law.
Some would-be reformers suggest we need to modify the First Amendment. Sen. Ernest Hollings, for example, proposed a new amendment to the Constitution that would specifically give Congress the power to control campaign spending. Election competition is just too unbalanced, he said, when a candidate has to fight more than one "well-financed opponent." The senator's concern is quite natural for an incumbent, but it represents exactly the point where his interests and the public interest part company.
Other critics have called independent or private spending excessive and irresponsible. But political action costs money, and whether or not it is irresponsible, excessive, unbalanced, or even unethical, the right to vehemently express political opinions is the very foundation of democracy. Abdicating the power of political expression to the government is the foundation of dictatorship. That is why most campaign-finance regulations are a dangerous idea.
by CNB