MCain-Feingold "Victory Lap"

This week is the fifth anniversary of teh enactment of that wonderful McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill. This monstrosity, complete with constitutionally suspect provisions, is the subject of Ryan Sager's lastest piece in the New York Sun. Looking at the purposes of the ban, Sager writes:

Take as a prime example of the reformers' boasting a statement put out yesterday by the Reform Institute, a non-profit group affiliated with Senator McCain of Arizona. The statement claims that BCRA has "succeeded in its objectives." How so? It "significantly reduced the corrupting influence of campaign contributions and enhanced the participation of small donors in the process."

Let's take those two claims one at a time.

As to the first part, that corruption has been reduced, this is a simple assertion, with not a single piece of evidence to back it up. There's a reason for that: There is no evidence. By what metric does one measure "corruption"? Mr. McCain and his crew couldn't define it before they passed McCain-Feingold; they can't define it now; and, thus, there's no way to measure it. Anyone paying attention to politics in the last couple years, however, would be surprised to find out corruption has been "significantly reduced." The names of three former Republican congressmen — Tom DeLay (departed from Congress under indictment), Duke Cunningham (in jail for accepting bribes), and Bob Ney (pleaded guilty to corruption charges) — jump to mind.

As for the enhanced participation of small donors in the political process, here's a question: If Messrs. McCain and Feingold took credit for water running downhill, would that mean they could slap it on their resumes? Small donors are participating more in politics because politicians are learning how to harness the Internet. So, unless Mr. McCain invented the Internet — and not Al Gore as we all learned in our civics textbooks — no one ought to be attributing this development to BCRA.

But was reducing indefinable "corruption" and upping the number of small donors really all McCain-Feingold promised?

The problem with "reducing corruption" as a goal is that, like Sager writes, no measurement of corruption. DeLay, Cunningham, Ney and potentially William Jefferson aside, corruption of the kind these men are guilty and/accused of has nothing to do with campaign finance, but rather with abuse of power. Even the cleanest campaign finance law you can imagine or even public funding will not prevent the kind of abuse of power that is true corruption.

The reduction of the influence of wealthy donors, obstensibly a goal of McCain-Feingold is contradicted by the very langauge of the law. First, prior to McCain-Feingold, the individual limit per election was $1,000 per person. However, McCain-Feingold not only raised that limit to $2,000 per election, but scaled it to inflation so that the limit is now $2,300 per person per election. Right now a wealthy couple can give almost as much to a candidate as the largest political action committee. In 2009, the individual limit will be raised again and will probably be around $2,500 or $2,600 per election. That will mean a wealty couple will be able to give as much or more than a political action committee, which is limited to $5,000 per election.

If McCain-Feingold was designed to get more small donors involved in politics, the law itself contradicts that goal as well. First, PACs and parties, the two entities most likely to pool the resources of smaller donors, do not get an individual limit ($5,000 per year to pacs and $25,000 to parties) that are indexed for inflation like the limit to candidates. Second, the growth of small donors in PACs and parties is directly realted to the ability of these groups to harness to low- to no-cost fundraising prowess of the internet and microtargeting, not McCain-Feingold.

The sucess of McCain-Feingold is a figment of spin and imagination. The unfair treatment and blatant incumbent protection of the Millionaire's Amendment and the ban on non-PAC funded advertising in the weeks leading up to primaries and election days means that groups with an interest in teh outcome of elections may not be able to make their viewpoint heard. The law has achieved no laudable goal and actually limits that which its sponsors say they hold dear--the limiting of the political speech rights of the little guy.