(e3mil columnist Alan Keyes recently founded and serves as chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. To visit their website click here.)
To which I reply that, having reduced the debate to the proper question, it would be nice if the Senate could move on to give the correct answer, which is that NO limit, whatsoever, should be placed on the money given directly to candidates and their parties by individual donors. The current Senate debate will no doubt conclude with passage of a new version of the incumbency protection plan that is the real purpose of all the campaign finance regulation in this country, however “reformed” they tell us it is. What the country really needs, however, is for our politicians to stop interfering with our constitutional right to the most fundamental forms of political expression.
Any acceptable proposal for reforming the way that American political campaigns are financed must be based on the premise of the Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association. The right of free association includes the right to associate our money with the causes we believe in, and to do so in any amount that we think is necessary to get the job done. For government to dictate what we can do under the rubric of “campaign finance reform” is a total violation of our Constitutional rights, and we should force our politicians to abandon it.
Campaign finance reform turns out to be incumbency protection anyway. Professional politicians are unlikely to devise a system that isn't in their own interest. We need to devise instead a system for financing our political contests in the interest of our freedom. The premises that should govern such a system are simple. The first principle is that there will be no dollar vote without a ballot vote. Only people who can qualify to enter the voting booth and cast a vote for a candidate should be able to make a contribution to his campaign. This means no corporate contributions, and no union contributions. It must be acknowledged that donations from entities which do not represent specified giving by individual voters are unconstitutional. Of course, legitimate groups of legitimate voters who wish to freely associate their money into unified or consolidated giving remain constitutionally protected. Such cooperative political action must, however, truly reflect the authority of members freely associating and intending to make a contribution. There must be no financial contributions whatsoever from any entities that are not actual, breathing voters.
The second principle is that when anyone casts a dollar vote it should be publicized immediately. The whole world should know who is giving how much, and to whom, so that the voters can enforce the result, not some gaggle of politicians acting in their own interest.
If we have this simple system of liberty based on our Constitutional rights, then we will be able to exercise that liberty. The people at the voting booth will decide what special interest should be driven out of politics, by driving out the politicians who represent them. We should not try to have bureaucrats and politicians enforcing this kind of political discipline. At the end of the day it's up to us, the voters, to discipline the political system. But we can’t do so if we don't have the information we need, of which the money trail is a principal component. Rich people who choose to give large sums to candidates and causes they believe in should be accountable for that support in the open political arena, engaged in the heat and dust of the political fray. They should not be permitted to hide anonymously behind PACs and other camouflage, but rather, should stand publicly behind the money they are giving, If they are willing to bear that kind of heat, then they can make their contributions.
Many of the less scrupulous donors and political interests who are manipulating the system today would not be willing to stand this kind of public scrutiny. And that compelled shame would itself regulate participation of money in our politics. Ultimately, publicity tied with our informed voting is the best way to regulate this system. It is the only regulation truly consistent with our rights and duties as free citizens, and happens also to be the only one of the many proposals currently under consideration that passes the Constitutional test.
As the elaborate dance in the Senate draws to a close, it is increasingly clear that there will be no significant liberation of the Constitutionally protected power of individual citizens to support the candidates of their choice in the measure they deem necessary. The individual donation limit may be increased a token amount to $2,000 from the $1,000 at which it has been frozen for a quarter century. Frozen along with it has been not merely the easily evaded limits on political manipulation, but more importantly, the abilities of constituencies of conscience to make heroic sacrifices in the causes of civic decency. Whatever modest increase in individual limits is enacted, it will remain illegal for decent citizens – the ones who won’t cheat – to devote substantial amounts of their wealth to political causes they believe in.
Meanwhile, the Senate has already rejected a sound proposal by President Bush to stop unions and corporations from spending money on candidates without the permission of their members and stockholders. Without such permission, unions and corporations are acting not as free associations of citizens, but as artificial citizens in their own right – and lacking the ballot vote, they should be denied the dollar vote.
Campaign finance regulation is an unconstitutional and incoherent mess, and the situation looks likely to be worse after the Senate finishes crafting a bill that is acceptable to that most select circle of special interests – the sitting Senate. Few areas of policy would benefit so much from the simple return to Constitutional principle, and in few areas are we so unlikely to see such a return. Real campaign finance reform – the return of political liberty in America – will have to await a new determination in her citizens to insist on our Constitutional right of free association that the Senate is about to vote to keep illegal.
