With the stock market trembling and an energy crisis choking domestic supplies and running up costs, it may seem an odd time for campaign-finance reform to sit big time atop the Senate s legislative agenda.
Democracy is at stake, after all.
It is to the people, declared Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Never mind that McCain used his own PAC to spread his charismatic calls for reform. The name comes from the senator s Straight Talk Express of his presidential-campaign days and has gone unnoticed by the press. The reformers often decry the present financing system as corrupt, unseemly and even legalized bribery. Opponents are labeled as special-interest sycophants trying to stay atop their political perches.