Campaign-Finance Reform: Incumbent Protection Racket.(Brief Article)

If campaign-finance reform is the solution, what's the problem? It used to be candidates' spending, which was supposedly out of control, promoting a corrupting race for cash. But while earlier reform bills featured limits on candidates' spending, that idea was dropped long ago. Senators this year voted to lift the restrictions on direct contributions to candidates, allowing them to raise and spend more. Last season's corruption is this year's common sense. Earlier versions of reform also attempted to ban PACs, then considered the primary vehicle of Big Money interests in Washington. That idea, too, was abandoned. Now Congress is debating a ban on "soft money" donations to political parties that would actually augment the role of PACs, which give "hard money" donations directly to candidates.

The case for campaign-finance regulations keeps shifting, without ever attaining coherence. But in debating the latest bill-McCain-Feingold- the Senate has achieved an admirable consistency: It is supporting reforms that protect incumbents, and blocking those that do not. Incumbents loathe three things: millionaire candidates, who can overwhelm them with spending; TV broadcasters, who charge them money to run their campaign ads; and independent groups, which can hammer them with negative advertising. McCain-Feingold, as amended on the Senate floor, neatly protects incumbents in all three cases.

One successful amendment would raise the limits on direct contributions to candidates when they face a rich, self-financing opponent. But the rationale for those limits was that unlimited donations are corrupting, or at least create the appearance of corruption. Or are donations corrupting only when there are no millionaires in a race?

Senators also voted to force broadcasters to sell them TV spots at the lowest possible rate. This is a measure without the slightest tissue of good-government justification, but is simply senators wielding their sheer power over broadcasters.

Finally, of course, McCain-Feingold would prevent unions and corporations-a category that includes many advocacy groups-from advertising 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election. This provision, too, would work to the benefit of incumbents, who are more likely than challengers to be the target of ads attacking their records.

McCain-Feingold's advertising restrictions are likely to be found unconstitutional, since dozens of court decisions say that political communication is ...