Campaign finance reform is worse than a waste of time. It is a very real attempt by both political insiders and demagogues to subvert the democratic process and to elect candidates more to their liking.
Is this a fair criticism? I certainly think so, but naturally others might disagree.
That is, of course, the point. Political debate consists of disagreements not only about facts but about tone. I happen to think that campaign-finance reform is a rhetoric device used by the political left and certain news organizations to advance their aims. I would hate for any judge or legislator to have the authority to decide whether I can say that, and to whom, and when, and with whose money.
The core of the First Amendment is the right to speak, organize, and influence political debate. Contrary to the apparent belief of many journalists, the Bill of Rights gives them no more rights or prerogatives than it gives anyone else. If The New York Times, a private company, has the right to spend thousands of dollars editorializing in favor of or against a candidate for public office, then so does Microsoft, General Electric, General Motors, Texaco, Ben & Jerry’s, or any other private company.
And don’t get carried away with Ralph Nader’s ludicrous differentiation of individuals, who have rights, and corporations, which don’t have rights. Corporations are merely bundles of contracts among individuals with rights. If I and hundreds of thousands of others people form a corporation, then we have the right to express ourselves either as individuals or as members of that corporation. Precisely speaking, GE has no “rights.” It is a stack of paper. But GE employees, stockholders, and customers have rights, constitutional ones at that.
A number of extremely complicated issues can be boiled down to this one point: no campaign finance law has ever been applied to a media company. Nothing prevents the company from supporting candidates or giving them favorable coverage, and fromspending boatloads of money doing so. Any attempt to muzzle the news media during an election — by limiting when they can mention candidates, or how much they can spend on political coverage, or what kinds of advertisers they are allowed to have — would result in cries of horror, and rightly so.
But every other private institution and individual has precisely the same right to participate in the political process and the public debate. What campaign reformers want is a protection of the ability of institutions they like to continue to influence the process, while keeping institutions they don’t like from doing the same.