DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710100024

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: BY WALTER G. MARKUM 

                                            LENGTH:   88 lines

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM? DON'T BET ON IT

A great deal of what we hear proposed under the rubric of campaign-finance reform is at best misguided and unlikely to work as advertised. At worst, it is more than likely to be broadly unacceptable, if not in violation of constitutional norms.

Take, for example, the often urged public financing of political campaigns - forget for a moment (although our legislators never will) that majority opinion remains steadfastly against this proposal, and assume that Congress really enacts such reform. Consider just a handful of the questions that would arise.

What agency would decide which candidates to fund? What rules would guide agency personnel? How would these keepers of the keys of the kingdom be selected? What qualifications must they possess?

What standards of support would be applied to identify candidates eligible for public funding? What evidentiary weight would be given to public-opinion polls? Whose polls, and what if they disagree? Editorial endorsements? New York Times or Washington Times? Don Imus or Dan Rather?

At what point in the process would the decision be made? In the primary season? In the pre-primary, delegate-selection season? After a declaration of intent, or after a political party endorsement?

How far outside the mainstream might a candidate go without forfeiting the opportunity to woo the voter with taxpayer-provided funds? Given some nominal level of support - 3 percent, 10 percent, whatever - should the public underwrite a campaign of an exemplar either of the radical right or the lunatic left? What restrictions can be lain on candidates or campaigns without betraying democratic ideals?

Put aside for a moment the vexing questions raised by the proposal for public funding and look at some of the other proposals to make our elections more . . . fair? effective? representative? Proposals at any rate intended to improve the system.

Give all qualified campaigns and candidates free time on TV. Determining this entitlement raises the same questions as does public funding. Furthermore, since the only product the TV (or radio) network (or station) has to sell is time and an audience, it seems to me that significant property rights are involved and serious questions are raised involving the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. Some authorities disagree, arguing that, unlike the case of print media, broadcast licenses are awarded by the government, and the licensee is regulated by a government agency. The same statement of course can be made with respect to airlines and railroads, but I have heard no one argue for free candidate transportation.

Limit independent third party expenditures in support of a party, a candidate or programs associated with a particular candidate. This proposal is too fragrantly violative of the First Amendment to merit anything but emphatic condemnation. No aspect of public law is more important to the preservation of free government than the unvarnished commandment of the First Amendment, ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .'' The very notion, supported it is said by some elected careerists, that just a little teeny limitation of the right to advocate during the electoral season will somehow make our elections more pure is offensive.

Raise the limit on individual contributions from $1,000 to $5,000 to account for two decades of inflation. Well, OK, but I don't see this as greatly increasing the clout of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America - not the middle Americans I know, at any rate.

It is doubtful that any sitting Congress will ever willingly pass really meaningful campaign-reform legislation. Members get to these positions of power and prestige by skillfully working the existing system; few are likely to be agents of its destruction. One useful reform that might prove difficult to vote against would be a full disclosure law, requiring not only the names of contributors to candidates but also requiring the identity of the sponsor(s) of any piece of political propaganda as well as its cost and the name of the guy who wrote the check. A crawl showing the cost and sponsor might well diminish the effectiveness of a slickly produced TV mini-drama arguing for or against a particular policy, but it is difficult to argue that the voter does not have the right to know.

Real campaign reform does not appear possible absent strong, principled political parties with full control over their own nominations, but a legislature peopled by the self-starting entrepreneurial candidates of today renders such an outcome unlikely. Term limits would surely effect major change, but we can't know what direction that change would take, and there is no way it could come about short of a constitutional amendment.

Expect only cosmetic changes in the campaign-finance laws, but take comfort in the belief that the searchlight currently illuminating political money practices will limit some of the most-egregious transactions for a while. The nation is strong; we will endure. MEMO: Walter G. Markum, a Portsmouth resident, is emeritus dean at the

University of Hartford and an adjunct professor at Old Dominion

University.

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