BICK-rah

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, a.k.a McCain-Feingold, goes before the Supreme Court on Monday. At stake is a lot of political money, and possibly the upcoming election. This case is complicated even by the high court's standards - NYTimes goes to great lengths to describe the convolution. The article also cites a Justice John Paul Stevens opinion on campaign finance reform that cuts to the heart of the issue. Stevens wrote, "Money is property; it is not speech." If this is indeed true, then Congress has broad rights to regulate its use in federal election activity. If money is speech, their right to regulate it is greatly diminished, though not abolished.

I agree with Stevens that money is not indeed speech. The intention of the prescient First Amendment was to protect unpopular opinions from persecution, not to guarantee any opinion a certain "volume". The recently remedied situation in campaign finance was itself an abrogation of the intention of the Amendment. By permitting massive individual and group contributions, the system gave a loudspeaker to the speech of corporations, unions, and some special interest groups. None of these groups are now disadvantaged - they are now merely no longer advantaged; it's a level playing field now. Take the unions for instance: they could reduce union dues & request that their members give the money to a specific candidate. If the voters represented by that special interest (the union) really do support the candidate, let them express it themselves, on equal footing with all other American voters.

Now, there are issues with the new system, but these stem from the fact that there isn't enough campaign finance reform, not that there is too much. As we've witnessed in the progressing campaign, the Republicans have a huge advantage in fundraising, primarily because their supporters are wealthier. Just as I don't like the idea of special interests "owning" the politicians, nor do I like the idea of the wealthy "owning" them. It's not possible in the U.S.A., but in an ideal world, political advertizing would be illegal. Politicians would be featured as news and human interest stories, and their message - not their sound byte - would have to attract voters. However, if we tried to institute that in the U.S. as it is today, we would merely shift undue influence to the Networks. As long as there's an oligopoly in mass communication, any attempt to recapture the rhetorical melee of the early 19th century is doomed.