Time To Stand Up For Reform

by Molly Ivins

What you can mainly do is support the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, which is scheduled to come up for debate on March 19. And this is where it gets very tricky -- where you have to be like a professional lobbyist and watch like a hawk to see whether the amendments being offered are helpers or cripplers.

Some of the amendments that will be offered are in fact good ideas, stuff that we would support if they were standing alone. But if they get added to this bill, it's a death sentence. The frail coalition that favors finally, finally outlawing soft money will not hold if the bill is markedly changed in any way, including for the better.

Your basic Common Cause and other campaign finance reform groups will be quarterbacking citizen efforts; call your state group. And if the phone lines to the Capitol are jammed, call your senators' in-state offices.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the bill's foremost opponent, says his strategy this time is to "love it to death." The Republicans have a Trojan horse: a substitute bill by Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska that would, in effect, be perfectly useless and thus is being pushed by the Bush administration, which detests reform but doesn't want to take the political heat for vetoing it.

The McCain-Feingold bill is not a perfect instrument; it's just the best that anyone can do right now. In politics, one does not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A whole lot of people don't like parts of this bill, including organized labor, the ACLU, the Christian Coalition, campaign consultants, both parties. In other words, anyone who votes for this bill needs political courage and steel nerves.

The bill outlaws soft money -- the unrestricted, unaccountable, huge donations that come from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. The problem for the D's is that they have pulled even with Republicans in raising soft money but are way behind in raising hard money -- the $1,000-limit donation that can be used directly on federal campaigns.

One way to destroy the McCain-Feingold bill is to raise the hard money limit to a point where removing soft money is meaningless. The AFL and other interest groups oppose the bill because it would prohibit them from running issue advertising near Election Day.

I think they ought to rename the bill, with all respect to its long-fighting sponsors, and call it the Marc Rich Memorial Reform Law. This bill is about everything that's wrong with the American political system and all those folks like Rich who can afford to buy "access." (Big campaign contributors never buy votes or special favors -- they just buy "access.") This is our chance to level the playing field so that someone besides the big rich can be heard at the federal level.

Here's what you can do: Write, phone, fax and e-mail your senators -- and not just yours. Drop a line to Republicans who should be supporting this bill and to Democrats who may waver. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey is a potential waverer. Dick Durbin of Illinois wants to "improve" the bill to death.

Neither John McCain nor Russ Feingold is Mr. Popularity with his own party. So watch and send support to some critical Republicans like Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Democratic stalwarts like Carl Levin of Michigan and John Kerry of Massachusetts can help hold nervous Democrats.

Most Democrats have already voted for McCain-Feingold three or four times, when they knew full well that it had no chance of passing. They need to understand that if they jelly now, "the whole world will be watching."

If you're only going to do one good deed as a citizen this year (or this decade), this is the time to make your voice heard. Our biggest problem in changing the corrupt system of campaign financing is cynicism -- people think that it can't be done. Well, it sure isn't going to be easy.

And those who say that there will be unintended consequences and that the money will just find another way to get around the law? They're quite right, you know. There will be unintended consequences, and there may well be some First Amendment issues with limiting advertising. And I'm sure that the money will eventually find a way to get around the new laws, too. But it will take time. And then we'll just go back and re-reform the reforms.