New campaign financing regulations may already be a failure - National Affairs

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2003 by Patrick Basham

Overall, the allegedly reformed campaign of the future will be less competitive, less controlled by candidates and their parties, and more influenced by the mainstream media and will involve fewer voters than the typical campaign of today. It appears, therefore, that campaign finance regulation's principal goals will not be realized. On the contrary, the unintended consequences of the new constraints on political speech will serve only to further the journey of American political campaigning down a path seemingly anathema to the stated desires of the leading campaign finance regulators. Most Americans support real campaign finance reform, but clearly that is not the future promised to them by the self-described reformers.

Patrick Basham is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government, Washington, D.C.