Reform Institute

At the time, I found the great McCain-Feingold dispute of 199X-2001 incredibly baffling. On the one hand, you had a lot of reformers and liberals lining up behind a law that pretty plainly wasn't going to make any kind of meaningful difference in the casual corruption of the political process. On the other hand, you had a bunch of conservatives treating John McCain's heresy on the misguided-but-meaningless piece of legislation as if he were personally performing abortions for married lesbian couples on the Senate floor. George Will, in particular, was just vicious and, as you can see with today's column, still harbors an immense distaste for McCain that I find hard to square with the two men's respective ideological positioning. That said, Will does us all a service in reminding the world of an under-covered aspect of McCain's career:

In 2001, McCain, a situational ethicist regarding "big money" in politics, founded the Reform Institute to lobby for his agenda of campaign restrictions. It accepted large contributions, some of six figures, from corporations with business before the Commerce Committee (e.g., Echosphere, DISH Network, Cablevision Systems Corp., a charity funded by the head of Univision).

Unlike his efforts to manipulate the public financing system, this particular McCainite gambit is pretty unambiguously legal, but that very legality and McCain's eagerness to exploit it mostly seems to me to underscore the hollowness of commitment to political reform. Now who knows, maybe Cablevision just felt really strongly about "soft money" contributions to political parties, but it sure seems pretty unlikely.

Comments

Many conservative pressure groups, like the anti-abortion lobby, felt that McCain-Feingold was aimed directly at them. McCain wanted to shut them up. George Will, I think, resents any ego the size of his own.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | February 28, 2008 3:41 PM

George Will, in particular, was just vicious and, as you can see with today's column, still harbors an immense distaste for McCain that I find hard to square with the two men's respective ideological positioning.

Ah, but it's often when the political differences are relatively minor that the knives really come out. See the anti-Hillary/anti-Obama rhetoric on this very blog for examples.

Posted by Persia | February 28, 2008 3:43 PM

On the one hand, you had a lot of reformers and liberals lining up behind a law that pretty plainly wasn't going to make any kind of meaningful difference in the casual corruption of the political process. On the other hand, you had a bunch of conservatives treating John McCain's heresy on the misguided-but-meaningless piece of legislation as if he were personally performing abortions for married lesbian couples on the Senate floor.

Yeah, that pretty much characterizes nearly every minor progressive reform I've seen in my lifetime.

Posted by El Cid | February 28, 2008 3:43 PM

Damned married lesbians can't practice contraception like the rest of us.

Posted by phil | February 28, 2008 3:51 PM

The soft money ban was a valuable reform, and I think it's a mistake to underestimate its effect on the Democrats' recent focus on raising money from individual donors. Not to mention their willingness to take a stand against the telecom companies, which would have been inconceivable 10 years ago.

The rest of McCain-Feingold was probably misguided and mostly meaningless.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | February 28, 2008 3:54 PM

I don't think the reforms were meaningless. Maybe for incumbents, but as Alan Vanneman points out above, many interest groups have had roadblocks thrown in front of them, and unfortunately, I don't think it's the anti-abortion folks. I think it's grass-roots efforts, smaller special interests, people and groups not affiliated with campaigns or 527s, younger people and outsiders who liked Obama or Ron Paul from the start. In other words, the people we should be roadblocking are not feeling the effects, but we've silenced many of the alternative voices in the process, which were already hard-pressed to get noticed.

Thus my favorite moniker for this legislation: The McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protention Act.

Posted by mike | February 28, 2008 4:09 PM

I don't think the reforms were meaningless. Maybe for incumbents, but as Alan Vanneman points out above, many interest groups have had roadblocks thrown in front of them, and unfortunately, I don't think it's the anti-abortion folks. I think it's grass-roots efforts, smaller special interests, people and groups not affiliated with campaigns or 527s, younger people and outsiders who liked Obama or Ron Paul from the start. In other words, the people we should be roadblocking are not feeling the effects, but we've silenced many of the alternative voices in the process, which were already hard-pressed to get noticed.

Thus my favorite moniker for this legislation: The McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act.

Posted by mike | February 28, 2008 4:09 PM

Yes, McCain-Feingold was quite likely to be ineffectual, but many of us thought it extremely dangerous for Congress to set a precedent in passing a law which actually prohibited the utterances of certain words at certain times prior to an election, even if the prohibition was restricted to a narrow form of assembly of citizens defined by the tax code. The plain purpose of the law was to make life easier for incumbents, and our political culture was already too easy on incumbents.

Posted by Will Allen | February 28, 2008 4:13 PM

Sorry - the second post is better, because I spelled "protection" correctly.

Posted by mike | February 28, 2008 4:13 PM

Yes, McCain-Feingold was quite likely to be ineffectual, but many of us thought it extremely dangerous for Congress to set a precedent in passing a law which actually prohibited the utterances of certain words at certain times prior to an election,

Is it credible to say that McCain-Feingold set such a precedent. Didn't it merely build upon already established laws that limitted "hard money" contributions? Furthermore, weren't there already an array of laws that "prohibited the utterances of certain words at certain times prior to an election"?

Posted by WillieStyle | February 28, 2008 4:21 PM

George Will, in particular, was just vicious and, as you can see with today's column, still harbors an immense distaste for McCain that I find hard to square with the two men's respective ideological positioning

What's so hard to understand? George Will cares about the First Amendment and John McCain wants to (and did) destroy it. The distate is entirely compatable with their respective ideological positioning.

That said, I don't see the big deal with the Reform Institute. It was perfectly legal at that time, so why would John McCain fight with one hand tied behind his back?

Matthew seems to be arguing that one must show a "committment to reform" by refraining from engaging in legal acts even while your opponents don't so refrain. That's idiotic. It's like saying Barack Obama should show his "committment to reform" by accepting public funds regardless of what his opponent does. Really, a hackish post.

Posted by Al | February 28, 2008 4:26 PM

Is it or is it not odd that pictures of naked women are protected by the First Amendment, but me renting someone's printing press to say Senator so and so is a bum and sorely needs chucking out in the soon to occur election is not?

When they first did any of this in 1974 they had limits for spending in House races, later thrown out by the Supreme Court along with bans on spending one's own money, which was just below the amount a challenger needed to spend to get in the game at all. Any thoughts on how they came up with the number?

It would seem to me that 'rules of the house' type stuff for sitting members would be fine, but since incumbents are always well financed under any system, the only effect campaign finance reform has is to inhibit challengers. Prior to 1974 campaign spending limits would have been,a and always were, struck down on First Amendment grounds. It would seem that the First Amendment exists so one can make say bad things about govt officials especially around election time, that's the entire point of it. When they relax ithe enforcement of it, what kind of laws would one expect to get? The ones that we have, I'd think.

Posted by j mct | February 28, 2008 4:43 PM

Further proof in this thread that the only rights the right caress about are those involving guns or money.

Look, people, reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech are allowed. Otherwise, people would be broadcasting advertisements by loudspeaker outside your house at 3:00 am. People could induce you to buy stuff by false claims ("Vialis! The drug with no side effects!") People falsely shouting, "fire," in crowded theaters would escape prosecution for the resulting deaths by trampling . . .

Posted by rea | February 28, 2008 5:04 PM

Look, people, reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech are allowed.

How anyone could think that saying "Senator X is a bum and should be voted out of office" is a "reasonable restriction[] on the time, place and manner of speech" is beyond me. It is the core speech protected by the First Amendment.

Posted by Al | February 28, 2008 5:20 PM

Yes, rea, people needing sleep to live, it is reasonable to prohibit other people from engaging in that behavior which would prevent sleep. Preventing people from hearing that their incumbent politician sucks, at a time and place that citizens could choose or not choose to listen to the message, doesn't quite clear the bar.

Posted by Will Allen | February 28, 2008 5:20 PM

If a person wants to say "X is a bum", McCain-Feingold doesn't get in their way. No restrictions. Saying that the McCain-Feingold prohibits that is a lie.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 28, 2008 8:05 PM

True, McCain/Feingold only gets in the way if they want to be heard saying it. How generous, McCain doesn't care what you say if too few people will hear to threaten an incumbant's chances of getting reelected.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | February 28, 2008 8:13 PM

Will "still harbors an immense distaste for McCain that I find hard to square with the two men's respective ideological positioning."

They are very different types of conservative, even if you'd place them close together on some 1-dimensionl scale of ideology. The reason Will can dislike McCain that much is because McCain has followed a certain temperament so consistently, a kind of temperament that is really the opposite of Will's more worldly, somewhat more cynical conservatism, which Will claims to get from Madison.

Posted by Colatina | February 28, 2008 8:30 PM