Commentary:
Campaign Finance Reform Frenzy...
Stop the Complaining!

By Stuart Rothenberg

(Dec. 11) -- Everybody seems to agree that something needs to be done about changing political campaigns, but nobody is doing anything about it. Well, in this case, campaign finance reform IS like the weather -- it's better to leave it alone than risk monkeying up the whole works.

All the agreement on campaigns -- that they are too negative, that candidates spend too much time raising and spending money, and that there should be a deeper discussion of "the issues" -- masks the fundamental differences that continue to exist both between the parties and within each of them.

The Republicans want campaign finance reform because they want to punish organized labor. Most GOPers are angry that union dollars spent on months of anti-Republican television ads almost cost them control of the House. So Republican members of Congress, and their generally anti-union allies in the business community, want to find some way to limit the AFL-CIO from a repeat performance two and four years down the road.

The Democrats' idea of campaign finance reform is limiting spending, in the hope that this will hurt Republican candidates and allow Democrats to regain control of Congress. Many Democrats, of course, also seem to buy into the philosophical argument that we are spending "too much" on campaigns, but a lot of the Democratic reason for limiting fund-raising and spending is simply self-interest. (This is politics, after all, so what's the big deal?)

In fact, both of the parties are simply acting like school children, whining about their opponents stretching the rules in an unfair way.

Republicans like to talk about campaign spending as speech, and they have relied on "legislative advocacy" themselves, much as the Democratic National Committee and organized labor did this year. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spent money on legislative advocacy early in this last cycle. And yet, the Republicans don't seem to have the same reverence for campaign speech (or the same admiration for legislative advocacy ads) when those messages are coming from Democratic or liberal groups.

The argument, generally put forward by liberals, that we are spending "too much" money on campaigns is particularly strange, since they never present a standard. I recently saw outgoing New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley (D) dismiss a question about this as if it were silly, and he never answered it.

What standard says how much is "enough" to be spent on a House or Senate race? Is there an absolute dollar figure that applies to all congressional districts? Or is it a relative figure based on family income, total advertising dollars or GNP. Or is it a figure based on voter contacts by television, radio, telephone, mail and carrier pigeon?

I don't see how anybody can know if we are spending "too much" on political campaigns and advertising until we know what we are trying to accomplish, and how to measure that. Then, we would have a way of knowing whether we were spending enough, too little or too much.

Some Republicans have bought into the argument that PACs are the problem. They may be right, if PACs have convinced most Americans that our political system is for sale to the highest bidder, thereby undermining the public's faith in the political system and in our political institutions. In this sense, it doesn't matter if the public is right or wrong about "special interests." (Personally, I'm not so sure they are right.)

But most Republicans aren't going to fall in line behind Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), just as most Democrats aren't ready to jump off the bridge of public funding just because a handful of their brethren would like to do so.

So while we might get some legislative agreement on campaign reform -- even campaign finance reform -- it's likely to come in smaller doses (maybe dealing with soft money) rather than fundamental "reform". And in this case, maybe that's not such a bad thing.