I recently enjoyed a high school soccer game between two rivals. The game began with a spontaneous respectful set of handshakes. Though the game ended calmly enough, there were periods of frustration and tension that resulted in shouting and pushing matches. Despite this intense competition, the players intuitively understood how much they relied on the exertions of the other team. They could only develop and excel because of the unrelenting competition and effort of their adversaries.
Political parties share much of the same traits of sports teams that compete. There exist real and important issues in contention, but part of politics involves the joy of competition. Political competition brings bracing disciplines. Political corruption and abuse of power are more common in political jurisdictions where one political party dominates, effectively unchallenged. Strong competitive parties have a cleansing effect.
As Americans, we enjoy two strong national parties with long histories. It is unfortunate that both campaign reforms and internal party reforms are acting to weaken party systems. The elders in political parties, people generally noted for their moderation, used to act as filters keeping more extreme candidates from gaining a foothold. Elected political leaders had the power bases deeply rooted their parties. As a consequence, the relationship between executive functions and legislative functions were less adversarial and more cooperative.
The separation of the political interests of presidents and their political allies in the legislature explains how President Clinton could "triangulate" himself between Congressional Democrats and Republicans and win re-election without significantly aiding his party. Despite the fact the Clinton was elected twice, his party has lost control of Congress and state governors are dominantly Republican.
Campaign finance reform as proposed would also exacerbate the weakening of parties. In Presidential elections, if one accepts Federal matching funds, one is limited on how much can be spent on campaigning and there are limits on the size of individual contributions donated. However, contributions to political parties, so-called "soft money," are no so limited. Consequently, soft money was carefully mixed to bypass hard-money limits in the last campaign by both parties. Direct advocacy for of the election of specific political candidates fall into the "hard money" category. More general advocacy can fall into the "soft money" category. Hence, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) found itself sifting through campaign commercials, ads, and even magazine articles trying to determine which ads and articles are and are not permissible.
George Will reports that the FEC is trying to assess a $94,000 fine against the Steve Forbes Campaign. Steve Forbes writes a regular column in the magazine bearing his name. The FEC is arguing that any article that Forbes writes dealing with a controversial issue should be counted as a campaign contribution from the magazine. Lovers of the First Amendment ought to be shuddering at the prospect of government agencies reviewing magazines for content and assessing fines based on their findings.
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