If Congress won't pass full campaign finance reform this year, as seems likely, proponents at least should try to secure full disclosure of contributions and expenditures. Polls indicate reformers are gaining public support for a ban on soft money and public financing plans are making headway at the state level, but almost certainly broad campaign reform can't pass Congress this year. That's because reform is the subject of a near-holy war. Reformers say they are fighting to save American democracy from the corrupting influence of special-interest money.
Opponents claim they are defending the First Amendment right to free speech.
Simultaneously, practical politicians see campaign money as their means of survival in an escalating arms race. Democrats say they support reform, but they failed to pass it when they held both the White House and Congress from 1993 to 1995. Then President Clinton shredded existing law in 1996, collecting vast sums of soft money from interests doing business with the government, laundering it through the Democratic National Committee and spending it on ads promoting his re-election. When former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., proposed that both Democrats and Republicans forgo soft money in the presidential election, he was denounced by Vice President Al Gore's campaign chief for suggesting unilateral disarmament. Reformers should test their sincerity.