Give ‘Reform’ a Rest

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

As the presidential election drew to its long-overdue finish, it appears there’s at least one thing that supporters of Senator Kerry and President Bush agree on: This is the most significant election in modern times.


Oddly enough, those of us who are excited by neither candidate – and who recall that overheated enthusiasts declare every presidential election the most significant of modern times – have reason to agree.


The far-reaching significance of this election, though, lies not so much in its outcome as in the way it was conducted. What’s happened this year augurs badly for many elections to come.


As it so often does, the bad news begins with an earnest effort by well-meaning reformers to make everything better – in this case, a campaign finance reform that two U.S. Senators, John McCain, a Republican, and Russ Feingold, a Democrat, pushed through Congress. Mr. Bush signed it into law in 2002.


The purpose of McCain-Feingold, like the purpose of all self-described reforms, was ostensibly benign: to rid politics of the sordid influence of fat cats and their filthy lucre. In retrospect, however, the reformers’ work looks less like an improvement and more like an act of sabotage.


You’ll see the evidence most keenly if you live in one of the battleground states or if (poor you) you watch a lot of cable television.


There the airwaves are choked with campaign ads that are hysterically conceived and factually deceptive – much worse, if such a thing is possible, than the ads that tortured the electorate in the pre-McCain-Feingold era. And most of them – note the irony – are paid for by fat cats.


The irony, of course, is lost on supporters of McCain-Feingold, who continue to insist the reform has been a success.


“McCain-Feingold was about ending the use of large sums of unregulated money to buy influence with the political parties and officeholders,” says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy21, an organization dedicated to ending “the undue influence of big money in American politics.”



Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.


“That goal has been met in this election,” Mr. Wertheimer says.


McCain-Feingold, among much else, made it illegal for corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals to give “soft money” – donations whose size or purpose isn’t regulated by the government – to political parties and candidates.


But the magnetic attraction between money and politics is not so easily neutralized. Soft money has flowed back into the system through “527”organizations, nonparty groups left largely unregulated by McCain-Feingold.


It’s not quite the same soft money, however. As the reformers had hoped, corporations have largely stopped giving soft money, now that 527s, named after the section of the tax code under which they’re organized, are the main conduit for unregulated donations. Why? Two reasons.


First, says Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a reform group, “corporations don’t get the same bang for the buck” with 527s. “They want that close connection to the political parties that 527s can’t give them.”


And second,”527s tend to be highly ideological, the real true believers,” says Noble. “Corporations shy away from the clear association with ideology.” Frightened by controversy, they avoid frothing partisanship.


In the vacuum created by their absence, the soft money now is coming from extremely wealthy, and harshly partisan, ideologues.


According to IRS data collected by Noble’s group, the most publicized of these true believers – George Soros, Peter Lewis of Progressive Corp., and Hollywood mogul Steven Bing – have together donated more than $50 million to anti-Bush 527s. An additional $53 million has come from two labor unions: the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.


On the right wing, Alex Spanos of the AG Spanos Companies and oilman T. Boone Pickens have together pumped almost $10 million into anti-Kerry 527s. Not surprisingly, this ideologically charged cash has gone toward highly ideological advertising – bordering on the scurrilous.


One Pickens-funded anti-Kerry 527, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, rocked the Kerry campaign this summer with a series of damaging, and almost thoroughly unfounded, advertisements undermining Mr. Kerry’s military record.


More recently, the Media Fund, a 527 funded in part by Mr. Soros and his fellow fat felines, released radio ads alleging Bush administration favoritism toward the bin Laden family after the September 11 terrorist attacks.


That ad, said the Annenberg Political Fact Check, “is among the worst distortions we’ve seen in what has become a very ugly campaign.”


Ugly campaigns are nothing new, of course. But 527s are making this one uglier. And while political parties are often unappetizing collections of shady operators, their general effect, as the British statesman Edmund Burke pointed out 200 years ago, is to moderate political debate. It’s hard to imagine a mainstream party having the nerve to underwrite ads as scurrilous as those produced by the 527s.


“There has been a particular harshness to these outside groups,” says Mr. Wertheimer. “They have none of the public accountability that parties and candidates have. They have to account to no one.”


The law of unintended consequences has seldom appeared so iron-clad: A reform designed to clean up politics by regulating donations to political parties has in effect “outsourced” the work of political parties to highly ideological groups that operate with scarcely any regulation at all.


The solution, say the reformers, is more reform. I’m not so sure myself. After this election is over – and not a moment too soon, either – let’s hope the reformers take a well-deserved rest.


The New York Sun

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