The nation’s new “do-not-call registry” was fielding 108 requests a second — both online and over the phone — at one point after it came into being on Friday. That’s quite a number of Americans fed up with telemarketers and anxious to have their names added to a list that they assume will protect them from receiving more calls during dinner telling them that they’ve won a contest or can get a great rate on a home loan if they act right now. It’s easy, therefore, to see why any politician would see this as a winning issue. President Bush himself announced the 108 requests a second at a White House event Friday morning. But didn’t we elect a Republican president to get away from these types of Clinton-style mini-initiatives? Karl Rove may be cribbing a bit too much from Dick Morris, one must suspect, given the Federal Trade Commission’s actions.

The downside for the politicians seems negligible. After all, the list of exempted entities sounds suspiciously convenient: Political parties and organizations, pollsters, survey firms, and charitable organizations are all exempt from the registry. While the registry might face tougher scrutiny on First Amendment grounds if these types of organizations were included, it seems to us that if we’re really talking about consumers’ choice, some consumers might not particularly want to hear from the Republicans or the Democrats or Zogby.

Although the Supreme Court has not always seen fit to protect commercial speech as vigorously as it does political speech, there seems to be little benefit to distinguishing be tween the two. Such was the issue before the Supreme Court when it decided recently to wait and see on a California case that pits Nike against a consumer activist. In Kasky v. Nike, the shoe-maker has been dragged into court over a campaign it launched to defend itself against charges that it abused its workers overseas. If commercial speech is treated as separate from other speech, Nike could find itself in a position where the New York Times can write a column attacking it — as Bob Herbert, a columnist there did — with the protections gained under New York Times v. Sullivan, and the company couldn’t respond without being held to the much stricter controls of false advertising and consumer protection laws. Better it would seem, to keep all speech on a level.

More to our liking, however, would be a system where the mechanism for blocking unwanted calls were left to the free market. Plenty has already been accomplished in this arena. Caller-ID is a wonderful tool, and well worth a few dollars a month to many people. And, for many in urban areas, the solution has simply been to switch entirely to cellular service. Most telemarketers are afraid to make unsolicited calls to cell phones, given that the clear consumer harm — customers pay for incoming as well as outgoing calls — presents all the basics of a successful lawsuit. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem impossible that this government-run system would backfire. The do-not-call list will, of course, be available to telemarketers — for the purpose of removing the names. But what is to prevent the list itself from falling into the wrong hands?