Taking liberties: campaign finance reform

Christian Century, March 5, 1997 by James M. Wall

Recently the general counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union appeared at a forum to discuss campaign finance reform. Joel Gora argued that any restriction on political expression is a violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech. He believes that individuals, political action committees and corporations should be free to spend as much money as they wish to influence the outcome of an election. According to the New Yorker, Gora contended that campaign finance reform would regulate "people's right to express their opinion. Issue advertising is the core to the First Amendment. It's people running an ad in favor of campaign reform or against it, in favor of pro-choice or against it, or whatever the issue might be.... You limit that, you violate the First Amendment."

Upcoming congressional hearings will examine alleged illegal contributions to the Democratic National Committee and President Clinton's re-election campaign and, to a lesser degree, allegations made against Republicans. These hearings should lead to laws that will curb the influence of money on the political process. But don't count on it.

Gora is a veteran of the fight against campaign-finance reform (he was a plaintiff lawyer in a 1976 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out many of the post-Watergate reforms), and he advocates unlimited spending in campaigns, a position favored by groups and individuals eager to shape policies beneficial to them. Says Gora: "If you limit the amount of money you can spend on your message, you've limited your ability to communicate the message itself."

This is a strong First Amendment argument. It is also dead wrong. Gora's argument focuses exclusively on one side of the phrase we cherish, "liberty and justice for all." Liberty is to be cherished, but my liberty is not absolute. My liberty can impinge on your justice, and my justice can undermine your liberty. The task of a democracy is to try to balance liberty and justice.

The 1996 campaign sparked a demand that we curb the obscene influence that money exercises over politics. A political action committee is now limited to giving $5,000 to a candidate; an individual contribution is limited to $1,000. But there are no limits and very little control over the money that PACs and individuals can give to political parties. This is the so-called soft money. The problem with soft money is that it allows party officials to spend unlimited sums on campaigns that quite obviously will benefit individual candidates.

The advice that circulated during the Watergate era was "Follow the money." In this year's postcampaign discussion the question is "Where's the money?"--a phrase made popular by the movie Jerry Maguire. The answer is that far too much of the money is in the hands of special-interest groups and of unions and corporations that tap their members and stockholders for contributions that will lead to decisions that will benefit them.

A bill to reform the present system, sponsored by Senators John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D., Wis.), has failed to gain support from other members of Congress, despite the rhetoric deploring funding excesses that we heard during the past election. As McCain pointed out in a recent radio interview, incumbents will not rush to make changes that work against their own re-election.

The absolutists on the issue of people's liberty to spend their money the way they like bring to mind the old joke about everyone being free to sleep under a bridge at night. For some reason, this liberty is exercised primarily by the homeless. The meaning of liberty has a lot to do with social conditions. The trouble with absolutism in the name of liberty is that not all people are equally able to take advantage of liberty.

It is easier to generate funds to defend liberty than it is to rally public opinion on behalf of justice. Liberty is clear-cut; justice is more complicated. How do we rally public opinion on behalf of something as vague and esoteric as campaign finance reform? The public must recognize that when democracy tilts in favor of the financially strong, it will inevitably be guilty of an injustice toward those without the resources to enter the debate.

Consider how our politics is shaped by those who have the money to demand action in return for their contribution. The continued economic boycott of Cuba, for example, can be traced in part to the financial clout of a small minority of Cuban-Americans. The political lobby of the National Rifle Association is effective in preventing gun-control legislation. Subsidies for agribusiness abound, while welfare support for the poor declines to a shameful degree. Our Middle East policies have long been driven by the ideology of Jewish contributors and by those wanting to protect the oil interests of Arab states. In perhaps the most spectacular failure in President Clinton's first term, the health care industry's resources guaranteed that that debate would favor health providers, not consumers.