``While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.'' — Abraham Lincoln.
It is hard to believe that there will be much gained from the current Senate hearings on campaign finance reform. Politicians of many ideologies cut corners and skirt the edges of the law to raise campaign funds. It is clear to all but the staunchest defenders of the President that in the last election cycle Clinton's campaign was so desperate to raise campaign funds that they adopted a cavalier and perhaps criminally negligent attitude about vetting campaign funds. The rules, however, are so complex that public outrage is difficult to muster. The Attorney General Janet Reno appears to believe that she is the Administration's defense attorney. The press is so indifferent that they have largely not covered the hearings on television. Without an equivalent of Watergate's John Dean, the scandal is likely to fizzle.
More unfortunately, campaign finance reform measures that may arise from the hearings will either unconstitutionally restrict free speech or lavish so much money on publicly-financed campaigns that unconventional and unknown voices will be drowned out of the public debate.
There are three axioms to remember about campaign financing:
- The larger and more intrusive government, the greater the incentives are to influence toward private benefit the decisions of government. The current expansive nature of government is an invitation to groups to sway the direction of government.
- Limited and equal expenditures of campaign funds gives the well-known and incumbents a competitive advantage in elections. It is often necessary for less well-known candidates to outspend their opponents just to gain name recognition.
- Even if campaign spending and fund raising could be effectively limited, it is virtually impossible to contain ``independent'' expenditures without restricting First Amendment rights.
The two conventional means of "cleaning up" campaigns are to limit campaign fund raising and expenditures or to institute public campaign financing. Even when campaign financing and spending are limited, individuals, corporations, labor unions and other organizations are free to ``educate'' the public with independent activities which impact elections. In such an environment, we will likely suffer through future Congressional hearings attempting to untangle relationships between official political campaigns and activities sponsored by independent organizations.
Public financing of political campaigns, even if it involves voluntary agreements to limit fund raising and spending, will not solve the problem. Setting aside the question of independent expenditures, equal spending in public financing campaigns increases the value of incumbency. Incumbents and well-known candidates retain the advantage of name recognition. Publicly-financed campaigns limit real political choices.
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