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Campaign-Finance Reform Won't Work

Let's say it straight: All the talk about campaign-finance reform is malarkey. The goal of making everyone equal in the legislative process is laudable but impractical. Certain individuals and interest groups will always have more money--and thus more advantages--than others. Even some of the country's leading campaign-finance crusaders say so. "The inequalities of the system aren't going to be changed by legislation," concedes Kent Cooper, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. Adds Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity: "You'll never eliminate the inordinate importance and presence of wealth in the political system."

Money in politics is like water: It will always find its level. There's simply too much at stake for moneyed interests not to work their way. Look at history. Direct corporate contributions were banned in 1907, and direct donations from labor unions were prohibited in 1947. Yet thanks to the legal fiction of "soft money," both groups now funnel millions of dollars into what's euphemistically called party building. And that's just for starters. Pressure groups and rich individuals increasingly don't even bother giving these unrestricted but still publicly disclosed gifts to the federal parties. They donate instead to state and local organizations, which often escape similar scrutiny. They also buy political advertisements or purchase the services of Election Day operatives themselves, skipping the middleman altogether. In other words, circumvention has become the rule.

What about publicly funded elections? Before the advent of soft money in the mid-1980s, that's how the general election of presidents worked. Bona fide candidates got the same amount of money, none of which came from private interests. But voters would never stand for the hefty new taxes that would be needed to expand that system to include congressional elections. Besides, the basic problem is bigger than politics. "As long as we allow money to be an expression of First Amendment rights," says American University professor James Thurber, "those who have money will have more influence than those who do not." Period.





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