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The Real Problem with McCain-Feingold |
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The Supreme Court buried the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law yesterday. It was a complicated law that prevented certain parties from running certain ads or saying certain things at certain times for fear that they might unfairly influence an election.
I had several problems with this law. One problem was that I find the constitution’s first amendment easy to read, thus: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech I think part of the reason McCain-Feingold existed in the first place is people’s tendency to say “yeah, but….”, followed by something about unions or corporations or education and so on. They are always well intentioned and usually have valid points. But it’s not the constitution that is flawed. If it instead said Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech unless it has a reasonable-sounding excuse --well, maybe a case could be made. After all, I’m sure the framers knew that people who could exercise free speech could use it to engage in monkey business. What THEY knew, and we have FORGOTTEN, is that trying to improve that situation will only make it worse. It’s easy to think of reasons free speech ought to be abridged. It’s easy to forget that, once government has that power, they’ll use it for any reason they want. And these are rarely good reasons. McCain-Feingold was a glorious demonstration of the founders' basic wisdom in this. A second problem I had is that while Exxon or the National Rifle Association were prohibited from having a voice in the conversation, George Soros, who isn’t even American, could somehow still drop hundreds of millions influencing our election. Or Michael Bloomberg could spend a couple dozen million of his own money to buy himself an election. Or SEIU, which is firmly connected to the Federal tit, could spend 60 or 80 million to make sure the milk keeps flowing. (By “milk”, of course, I mean money that used to be mine.) It should have been named the “Slush only goes to Democrats” law. So I think by any fair analysis, the law completely failed in its stated intent anyway. The natural reaction, especially among the liberal ilk, is to try and tinker with it better. We just didn’t have the right restrictions, and we weren’t prohibiting the right things. But take a step back. This case came up because some people made a movie critical of Hillary Clinton and a court told them THEY COULDN’T SHOW IT. People were not allowed to watch it. (Now would be a good time to scroll up and re-read the first amendment). Can you see where I’m going with this? No matter how great the intention, it is still the case that intrusive, overarching laws get misused and misapplied. Big government is not the solution here; it’s the problem. Government should never, ever have that power. You start with some wonderful reform effort and you end up with your ruler telling you not to watch a movie because it displays a prohibited opinion. Can we all agree that something went terribly wrong, here? (By the way, the case got widened because the administration, in preliminary hearings, not only asserted its right to ban movies, but said it had much broader discretionary powers it hadn't used yet. That's a lot scarier than Exxon is. Scariest is that 4 supreme court justices didn't have any problem with that.) Much (legitimate) screaming is now going on that elections will simply go to the highest bidder. But I think one would have to admit that this was already true; the future will simply see more bidders. I think there is a more profound factor here. Why are all these parties willing to bid hundreds of millions of dollars on elections? Why is getting the right office-holder worth that kind of money? The reason is that the government now controls positively everything. If you want to drive your competitors out of business, the easiest way is to get a favorable law passed, say, on testing for lead content, which will have that effect. If you want more union dues, it’s hard to persuade people to join your union. But it’s easy to get the government to force them to. It’s a pain to make a living in agribusiness. It’s easier to have the government pay you not to farm. Bottom line? Whether congress passes your dream campaign finance law, or whether there is no law at all, politics will stay this much of a money game as long as it’s worth it. Big government cannot solve this because big government is the problem. Try to picture a federal government that was constrained by the constitution. Think of all the things it COULDN’T force people to do. Who would spend 100 million dollars on a campaign when it couldn’t possibly result in ethanol subsidies, forced unionization, or minority set-asides? No welfare mandates, no bank bailouts, no money supply manipulation. No mileage requirements, no fluorescent lightbulb requirements, no class size requirements. There would be no point in bidding. Why buy the government when people would just be able to keep on peacefully living their lives, keeping their own money, and doing what they wanted afterward? Yes, I’m saying that the only solution is small government. If someone buys a current election, they basically get the entire USA for their purchase. You will never ever manage to make an honest campaign process for a bargain like that. It’s too lucrative. The only hope is to make the prize not worth the bidding. That had been the original idea. Campaign financing is only the symptom. The problem is that we lost our republic. |