Gun to the head time: On November 2,who wins? JFK II or Bush the Second? Can the GOP hold both houses of Congress? Will the Democrats be able to capitalize on local faux pas and take back more governorships than in the midterm elections? Hard to say, but I predict with some confidence that the winner will be none other than Rep. Dick Gephardt. The congressman for Missouri’s third district may have been forced to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination before the first primary ballot was cast, but his big idea has won in a rout.

Mr. Gephardt said it best, to a reporter for Time magazine in 1997: “What we have is two important values in direct conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can’t have both.”

For years, the long-suffering House minority leader led the direct charge against First Amendment guarantees to freedom of speech in the name of fairness and the common good. He called the 2002 vote on campaign finance reform legislation – pushed along, let’s not forget, by fears that Republicans had to find a shield against Enron-generated charges of influence peddling – the most important of his more than two decades in Congress.

President Bush ushered the bill into law, in spite of serious constitutional objections that he outlined at the signing ceremony. At the time, his John Hancock was a matter of political expedience: Senator McCain, Mr. Gephardt’s counterpart in the GOP, upset Mr. Bush in New Hampshire in 2000 and gave the president a dogfight for the nomination. The Rovian formula was simple and brutal: Sign the legislation, eliminate a poison pill primary challenger in 2004, and let the Supreme Court take the hit for overturning most of this superficially popular package.

Instead, by a vote of 5-to-4, the Supreme Court chose to read elite opinion into its interpretation of the First Amendment. It upheld bans on spending by independent groups within two months of an election by creating of a new kind of speech – “electioneering communications” – that may be abridged pretty much at Congress’s whim. The National Rifle Association may not publish ads saying that candidate X is for gun control. The National Organization for Women may not point out that congressman XY voted against the Equal Rights Amendment.

Enter the much-maligned Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with their book and radio and television advertisements questioning Senator Kerry’s account of his service in Vietnam. Whatever the merits of their criticisms, this is the very kind of effort that the First Amendment was promulgated to protect: public spirited citizens who have a legitimate grievance and want to bring it to the attention of the public, to keep in mind as we mail in our absentee ballots.

Look at the response: The New York Times creates a conspiratorial follow-the-money diagram and strains to find a process-oriented excuse to avoid saying outright that these people shouldn’t be allowed to make such distasteful accusations. Mr. Kerry files a complaint with the Federal Election Commission to suppress their book. Mr. Bush calls for a ban on all election spending by unincorporated 527 groups, which fall outside the bounds of the current legislation. Mr. McCain judges this insufficient and twists the president’s arm to come out more forcefully against this specific effort.

The Swift vets will have their say, but that will be the end of it. Now that the constitutional protections of speech have been removed, 527s are a loophole that will be closed. During the debate over the 2002 campaign legislation, many C-SPAN watchers were no doubt shocked to learn just how many elected representatives wanted to pass this legislation so that people would stop saying mean things about them.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Campaign finance reform is only superficially about money. Rather, it’s about a political class trying to insulate itself from serious criticism. Remember, one of the people who raged against the 1974 reforms was Eugene McCarthy, a former senator, who insisted that without the ability to quickly raise and spend a lot of money from a few sources, he never would have been able to launch the anti-war challenge that brought down once mighty Lyndon Baines Johnson.