The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision yesterday, upheld most of the provisions of the hotly contested McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. Ignoring First Amendment critics that have argued that the legislation's controls on spending amount to limits on free speech, the Supreme Court deferred to Congress in determining when and how First Amendment rights should be weighed against the need for reform.
Groups from both ends of the political spectrum, including the NRA and the ACLU, joined together to denounce the decision as an unconstitutional infrigment on their First Amendment right to participate, and voice opinions, in the political process. NRA chairman Wayne LaPierre called the decision "the most significant change in the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which tried to make it a crime to criticize a member of Congress."
To read it straight from the horse's mouth, click here. For some analysis, click here.
The overall goal of campaign fianance reformers is a system of publicly-funded campaigns, with the idea being that without money as a corrupting factor, politics will be cleaner and somehow better. Public financing would instead yield two disturbing side-effects. First, Congressional incumbants would be virtually unbeatable as a result of challengers not being able to raise and spend the money neccessary to overcome the considerable advantage of incumbancy. Second, the government would be forced to subsidize Congressional candidates who, because their message does not resonate with voters, are unable to raise the neccessary funds to launch a bid on their own.
One need only look at the success of the Howard Dean campaign to see that candidates can raise money, and be competative, through numerous small individual contributions. Dean is sitting on a goodly size amount of money, and yet has no odor of corruption about him. He was able to raise the money by having a clear message that a lot of people have responded to and a solid political organization able to harness simpatico feelings and turn them into campaign contributions.
In addition to winning the money primary, Dean has been able to win the endorsement primary, snagging, among others, Al Gore, Bruce Babbitt and several strong-armed unions with large ground operations in Iowa. Both Dean and Gore took some heat for Gore's endorsement from the Washington Post's David Broder and Richard Cohen. Broder didn't think it was proper for Gore to jump in when the race was still, at least in Broder's mind, tight. Take notice of the national polls Broder cites, which he knows are useless at this point of the game beause they ignore the role of momentum. Cohen took Gore to task for the class-less way he handled the situation, including not telling Joe Liebermann, Gore's former running mate and a man who stayed out of the race to his detriment until Gore made a decision about running, until well after the story had broke in the media. I don't usually like Cohen, but you're not going to get an argument from me about Gore being a jerk.
Tony
