Chip Taylor

The futility of campaign finance reform

A New York Times article describes the failure of McCain-Feingold:

Harold M. Ickes is a founder of an organization created to help defeat President Bush this fall, a group that he emphasizes operates wholly independently of the campaign of Senator John Kerry and the Democratic National Committee.

But that has not stopped him from courting some of the Democrats' wealthiest donors here at the Four Seasons, a nexus of party operatives, Kerry campaign officials and friendly celebrities gathered for the party's convention this week. In a luxurious suite where guests nibble on chocolate ganache tarts and sip espresso, he asks them to give and give more.

Then, in the evenings, this onetime White House deputy chief of staff throws on his credentials as a Democratic Party superdelegate and joins party functionaries gathered for the Democratic convention at the FleetCenter as one of their own.

Just how precisely this squares with the new campaign finance law that allows such groups, known as 527 organizations, to raise unlimited sums for politics so long as they do not coordinate with the candidates or the national parties depends on how much one takes Mr. Ickes's word about the distance between him and the Democrats.

Advocates for stronger fund-raising regulation say that Mr. Ickes's four-star road show provides the most vivid example yet of how he and leaders of groups like his have all year been flouting the new fund-raising laws, drafted to stanch the flow of unlimited donations to parties and candidates.

But Mr. Ickes and his colleagues say they are well within the boundaries of the law, and they are unapologetic. They say they are in no way coordinating their activities with the many party and campaign officials with whom they are rubbing elbows so frequently here this week, simply legally fishing for dollars in a fully stocked pond.

Trying to staunch the flow of funds to politicians is like a game of Whack-a-mole. Try as you might to smack down donors in one spot, they'll just pop up somewhere else.

When the new campaign finance law was debated in Congress its supporters argued that it would cut the tie between big money contributors and lawmakers. Its opponents countered that it would drive that money away from the national parties and into other, more opaque, affiliated groups that would operate like shadow political parties.

So far, it looks to me like the opponents made the better prediction.

Campaign finance reformers would have you believe that with just the right set of donation rules in place, Lindsey Graham would pay me as much attention as he would, say, Roger Milliken. That doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Personally, I would prefer a system in which people are free donate to politicians or parties as they wish, in any amount, so long as it is fully disclosed. (Yeah, I know the arguments against disclosure; I'm not convinced.) Voters would be free to decide if a politician was bought or merely well-supported by ideological fellow travellers and cast their vote accordingly.

But that's not what we have. So to Harold Ickes and all his money-grubbing ilk any political persuasion I say, "You go guys! Raise and spend all the money you can get your greedy mitts on."

Seriously. I hope they do everything they can to thoroughly undermine so-called campaign finance reform.