ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 1996 TAG: 9610300018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
THE STENCH arising from news stories about campaign finance could have a helpful effect if it prompts efforts to clean up a system in which government favors are auctioned to the highest bidders. If you're waiting for reform, though, better not hold your breath.
The biggest recent stink surrounds reports of Asian gifts to the Democratic National Committee. Democrats have a lot of explaining to do for such outrages as the Clinton-Gore fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple in California, which featured $5,000 gifts from monks and nuns who had taken vows of poverty; and the $400,000-plus donated to the party by resident aliens from Indonesia.
Only now has a serious probe begun into the dubious activities of John Huang, who moved from an Indonesian conglomerate with ties to the Clintons, to a trade job in the Commerce Department, from there to a fund-raising job with the DNC.
But the odor, of course, is eminently bipartisan. According to figures from Common Cause, Democrats in this election cycle have taken $998,700 from their biggest foreign contributors, via U.S. subsidiaries. Republicans have accepted $2.4 million from theirs. A former top fund-raiser for Dole recently agreed to pay $1 million in fines for laundering contributions through Hong Kong.
Then there's Pepe Fanjul, the Cuban and legal American resident but not a U.S. citizen, who has sweetened Dole's campaign finances (as well as Democrats') considerably over the years. Fanjul oversees a sugar empire in Florida secured with federal price supports and quotas on sugar imports.
The smell, moreover, is by no means limited to questionable gifts from foreign interests and resident aliens, or to clearly illegal behavior. These stories get the headlines, deservedly. But what's legal, indeed the whole system, invites public cynicism.
Both Clinton and Dole accepted public financing for their campaigns in exchange for voluntarily limiting spending. Then they circumvented those limits by having their political parties accept so-called soft-money gifts in huge, unlimited amounts. It's all legal.
The road to reform isn't easy. It is made more difficult by U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which equate money with political expression. And it runs up against a basic problem: Special interests will continue to find a way to get money into campaign coffers as long as Washington sends money and political favors back.
It isn't just that campaigns have grown so expensive. Given the amounts the federal government itself spends, and the excessive politicization of the economy (sugar quotas are just a worst-case example), the odor of politics-for-sale cannot be eliminated.
Which this is not to say attempts cannot be made, or real improvements enacted. Remember, 16 months ago, when Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich shook hands and pledged to appoint a bipartisan reform commission? It never happened.
Whether it happens after the election will depend on the duration as well as the level of public outcry, regarding a scandal that originates not among foreign lobbyists but within the American political system.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB