It's soft heads, not soft money

Human Events, Mar 26, 2001 by Coulter, Ann

Sen. John McCain is in the news again. Make that "Vietnam War hero," "rockstar status," "quixotic Arizona Republican tilt[ing] at the political money establishment," "a man who forgave the Vietnamese despite his captors' hanging him by his broken arms" John McCain. These descriptions were culled not from paid political ads but from the adversary press-Newsweek, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and Time magazine respectively.

It would probably be superfluous to add that John McCain claims to be fighting against powerful interests. Interests, evidently, that are not quite powerful enough to prevent the entire media behemoth from erupting in joy at the mere mention of John McCain's name.

In point of fact, the faceless powerful interests McCain is battling are little old ladies sending checks to the Christian Coalition. (Or as McCain delicately put it during his short-lived presidential cam-, paign "forces of evil.")

Even if that little old lady were Imelda Marcos, in politics power is information and no special interest group in the history of the universe has wielded the power of the modern media. But that isn't the powerful interest McCain opposes.

Hurly-Burly To the contrary, a fair listing of some of the little guys being championed in this David and Goliath tale would include downtrodden wretches such as AOL-Time Warner, G.E.-NBC, CBS, ABC, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

It has to be said, when these little guys get together they are not without influence. Why if they set their minds to it, they could probably even compel the United States Senate to spend two weeks deliberating a bill the public couldn't care less about. Something like the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill.

Though eternally vigilant about the influence of "money in politics," the news media never get around to mentioning that they themselves are specifically exempted from the spending restrictions of the campaign finance laws. Oddly enough, the vast monied interest of little old ladies writing checks to the Christian Coalition has never managed to reveal that stunning fact to the public.

In the romantic John Stuart Mill conception of free speech, truth would emerge triumphant from the hurly-burly of the marketplace of. ideas. But there is nor hurlyburly. There is no marketplace. There isn't even room for a small dissenting opinion.

Consequently, almost no one has the first idea what McCain's idea of campaign finance "reform" entails. Neither the problem nor the relevance of the purported solution is ever really explained by the media, much less critically analyzed. Instead the media vomit out meaningless bromides and nonspecific outrage about money in politics.

In lieu of an actual explanation, the media bandy about sinister-sounding phrases"soft money," "influence-peddling," "legalized bribery," and "loopholes." The argot of Gangsta Rappers is more lucid, varied-and certainly more descriptive-than the inane prattle of journalists discussing campaign finance "reform." (And then they wonder why Americans care more about the Furbish Louse Wart than campaign finance reform.)

"Soft money"-the heart of all campaign finance reforms-is a ridiculous, meaningless concept. All it means is: "not hard money." Hard money is campaign money strictly regulated by the federal government. Consequently "soft money" is everything else-money donated to political parties, money left for the paperboy, money spent on that nice muffler Dick Gephardt doesn't want us to buy.

That's why "soft money" is always insipidly defined as "large unregulated donations to political parties or independent groups." But there's no definitional reason that "soft money" has to be "large." And "independent group" could mean almost anything, including the paperboy. "Unregulated" is the key term here. (Figuring out the meaning of "soft money" .cleared things up as much for me as anything since I realized that if you are both "near-sighted" and "far-sighted," you have perfect vision.)

Buying a thousand copies of George W. Bush's biography to distribute to undecided voters would count as spending "soft money." Except, in another weird journalistic trope, it wouldn't be "spent." Soft money-or "money"-is always "funneled." It's never just "donated" or "given" or "spent:"

Liberals hate "soft money" for the same reason they hate tax cuts: It is money controlled by American citizens rather than the federal government.

But -they can't just say that. So they abjectly refuse to call money spent on political causes "money" and doggedly employ the obscurantist "soft money," which sounds sneaky.

Similarly pathological, issue ads are invariably described as "thinly disguised" advertisements for a specific candidate. But, the thing is-that's what the law requires. Much to the consternation of liberals, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot regulate political speech that falls short of expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate.