Can we clean up the act?

National Review, Oct 27, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 23

It's ironic but horribly true-to-life that the Democrats are profiteering from the Democratic election scandals. Here is the situation: As the investigations proceed, it becomes clearer and clearer that the White House is a stinkpot. So do something about the White House? Well, no. Do something about what causes all those noisome fumes, which is elections. And of course there is the White House pointing out ("As I have been recommending for five years" --Clinton) the need for campaign-finance reform. And the only tune in town these days is Senator McCain's reform bill. But it is a bill the majority of Senate Republicans don't want, for reasons personal and professional. Without soft money, Republican office-seekers would have a harder time of it. And the proposed attempts to outlaw soft money, as described in the McCain bill, would bring in a second tectonic age of regulation and countervailing anfractuosity.

Here are the two poles:

1. The expenses for electioneering have to do with the public business. Just as it is a public burden to construct poll machines, so is it a public burden to give the voters the programs of the competitors. Therefore the government should pay the cost of radio, television, and newspaper advertisements, and no private expenditures should be authorized.

2. Democratic engagements presuppose contests. It is entirely an entrepreneurial matter what goes into those contests. If the Widow Angelina wants to give her entire fortune to the cause of Candidate Smith, that is her concern and hers alone. The distinction between soft and hard money is difficult to define and impossible to enforce. So: Get out of the way -- this is Atlas Shrugged time.

The second school makes two concessions: namely, that all contributions should be American in origin and that a gift should be instantly traceable. Tokyo could not legally subsidize a candidacy, but General Motors could -- provided the subsidy were instantly made public. You make the gift at noon. By noon the following day, you've informed the Internet.

Both models are intellectually tolerable. What discourages any enthusiasm for either is the nagging foreknowledge that although public officials are necessary, voters intuitively focus on the nexus between civic ambition and avarice. In the public sector, avarice comes in the orthodox tender -- money -- and in the alternative tender of power. It is nice for a politician to have both, but there are many who will sacrifice a lot of the former for a little of the latter. Consider the wealthy politician who is willing to spend $20 million in return for a seat in the Senate, where he exercises power and, in recognition of his status, gets free parking. The voter is entitled to wonder whether the public official is being subsidized by constituents who want to be beneficiaries of the public official's distribution of goods and services. We wonder why the great majority of Americans hold Congress in such low esteem. Rather, we don't wonder why Americans hold Congress in such low esteem: Congress is there, in the famous indictment, to substitute political for economic means of self-aggrandizement.

What the Republicans very much need is a bill to which the modifier "reform" can be attached which at least will satisfy some members of the public that the GOP is concerned with the mess in hand. They face the disadvantages always faced by the strategically sensible alternative. Advantages are immediately had by those who hold that the elimination of any limit on spending is an invitation to the rich to buy congressmen. GOP spokesmen can point to the hundreds of millions in soft money doled out by the labor unions. There are two ways to handle that problem. One is to enforce the Supreme Court's Beck decision, which denies a union the right to spend a member's money on political causes without that individual member's consent. Another is to say: Let the unions spend as they will, but record every dollar as a political donation, even as every dollar given by corporations is currently recorded under the law.

But do away with the soft-money/hard-money blur. We need an open season in political spending. Say an eight-year trial period. No holds barred, but copy of everything to the Internet. See what happens. Could it be worse?