Call to Repeal McCain Feingold

Last month, Mitt Romney made a call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold. Today, James Bopp supports that same position, with many of the same arguments. But here is something a little new that I had suspected, but never confirmed:

Regarding abolishing PACs, the big "turnabout" is not by Romney, who was concerned enough about PAC contributions that he didn't take any in 1994, but by the campaign finance reform lobby. The center piece of the original McCain-Feingold bill, introduced in the early 1990s, was abolishing PACs. This followed a relentless campaign by the campaign finance reform lobby, including Public Citizen, Common Cause and The New York Times, which published breathless exposes demonizing PAC contributions for their influence on legislators. Incumbent politicians were receiving about 80% of PAC contributions, and, in 1997, the PAC ban was dropped, as the result of opposition mainly from House Democrats and Senate Republicans. "Back-scratching" by the Washington political class seems like an apt, if modest, description of this.

Now, however, under the new McCain-Feingold, PACs are just a way for "citizens to play by the same rules as candidates." Not only are PACs not prohibited, they are now the required vehicle for everything a group wants to do to participate in our democracy – mention the name of a candidate, tell fellow citizens about what a politician is doing to us or for us in office, lobby him or her about an upcoming vote in Congress – all must be done through a PAC.

Nor has McCain-Feingold improved public cynicism about politics. Since its adoption in 2002 through 2004, almost 50% more Americans believe that people don't have a say in what the government does and 17% more Americans think that quite a few governmental officials are corrupt.

Finally, the Post justifies the "free speech blackout period" as stopping "sham issue advertising" – "the creation of corporate America and labor unions trying to get around the law that prohibits them from making political contributions." The news media exception belies this claim. The news media in America is owned almost entirely by six multinational corporate conglomerates, which earned total revenues in 2005 of 281 billion dollars. They can mention the names of federal candidates 24/7/365 and many in the media want to influence federal elections with this massive corporate spending.

This disparate treatment of individual rights to freedom versus the freedom of the press is what really drives much of the opposition to the electioneering communications provisions.

Rich people can complain and the media can mention candidates by name, even in editorials, which are not, by definition, "news stories," but the most basic right of americans to speack about issues and join with others to advocate for those issues is severly curtailed.

That is the true fundamental flaw of McCain-Feingold.