All Americans who value the First Amendment will regret the retirement of Bradley Smith from the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Smith, a member of the commission since 2000 who served as its chairman in 2004, publicly announced his resignation last week. He steps down August 21.

Mr. Smith was a rare character to head a regulatory agency: a man of principle who openly questioned the wisdom of the very regulations he was charged with enforcing. “I think there are a lot of things that should be deregulated,” Mr. Smith has told The New York Sun. “I think most of the restrictions do more harm than good. We really need to start thinking harder about the costs of some of the campaign finance regulation.”

His departure comes at a critical time, when the Federal Election Commission may radically expand its attempt to regulate political speech in election time. The commission is under a court order to consider extending the restrictions of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law, which may undermine the unfettered political debate of bloggers on the Internet.

The commission voted to exclude the Internet from McCain-Feingold regulations in 2002, but a U.S. district judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, found that “The commission’s exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated-communications regulation severely undermines” the goals of campaign-finance reform. Since linking to a candidate’s Web site or forwarding by e-mail a campaign press release could be considered a “contribution,” the regulations are potentially expansive. The FEC has solicited public comments and scheduled a public hearing on the matter for June 28-29.

“The judge’s decision is in no way limited to ads. She says that any coordinated activity over the Internet would need to be regulated, as a minimum. The problem with coordinated activity over the Internet is that it will strike, as a minimum, Internet reporting services,” Mr. Smith recently told CNET News. “It becomes a really complex issue that would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today.”

The campaign-finance law includes an exemption for press, but the statute only refers to periodicals and broadcast outlets. It’s not clear that the Internet fits into those categories. Mr. Smith, for his part, wants to preserve free speech on the Internet. He and the two other Republican commissioners voted to appeal the judge’s decision in respect of the Internet, but the three Democrats blocked the appeal from proceeding.

“We have been forced into a position that there will be some regulation; and that alone will mark a substantial change in the whole disposition towards the Internet. I think that the commission can and should adopt a broad exemption for personal activity on the Internet and also for paid ads to be on the Internet,” Mr. Smith recently told TechCentralStation.com. “We need to make clear that bloggers are press, these are periodicals and people update them regularly; that the First Amendment does not only apply to people who are members of the National Press Club, that it is not limited to people who have a little press card in their hat band like some 1930s movie.

“The press is everybody; every citizen has a right to publish his views and to promote his views and if the Internet is blurring a distinction between traditional media and just average citizens, I am not sure that’s a bad thing. That’s a good thing, a democratizing thing, it is exactly the type of thing that the reformers claimed for years to want. They ought to rejoice in it. That they don’t is interesting in itself.”

Indeed, it is – and serves to confirm what we’ve been saying all along: Campaign-finance “reform” isn’t about promoting political participation; it’s about restricting speech and protecting incumbent politicians. The same motive is behind a new effort by Senators McCain and Feingold, the 527 Reform Act of 2005, to restrict the activities of activist groups such as America Coming Together and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The FEC under Mr. Smith’s leadership ruled that 527 organizations, named for the section of the tax code under which they are created, are exempt from the original McCain-Feingold regulations.

“This would be a massive expansion in federal regulation,” Mr. Smith said of the attempt to regulate 527 groups in an interview with Reason magazine at the time. “Where is it corrupt if thousands of individuals give money to MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org runs ads that are critical of the president?” Instead of preventing corruption, he said, “we’re simply out there to limit people’s speech on the grounds that it might influence the election.”

The new proposal from Messrs. McCain and Feingold would force the upstart citizen groups to register as political committees and abide by the same hard-money limits as the national political parties. The 527 groups would no longer be able to use so-called soft money to purchase advertisements that mention federal candidates. In other words, Americans would not be as able to affect the national debate at election time.

Anyone who agrees with Mr. Smith that more speech and participation in public debate tends to enhance rather than hinder American democracy must be grateful for his tenure at the FEC. As politicians dream up new affronts to the freedoms of speech, petition, press, free exercise of religion, and assembly, we hope President Bush will appoint a replacement for Mr. Smith who is a vigorous defender of the First Amendment.