(3 of 4)
Meet Mr. Un-Reform
Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who for a full decade has been reform's brick wall in the Senate, loves to boast correctly that "This issue has never defeated anyone in the American political process." Since Republicans particularly excel at raising the kind of general-purpose "soft money" that the McCain-Feingold bill aims to ban, opposing it is a party directive. (Enforcement is greatly helped by the fact that McConnell is the man in charge of parceling out all that soft money to GOPers; members buck him at their peril.) As of now, three Republicans have crossed over with McCain, but the bill is still eight votes short of breaking McConnell's promised filibuster. And until voters deliver an ultimatum, the GOP will stick with the time-tested way to get to Washington and stay there raising more money than the other guy.
As frustrated with the special-interest stranglehold on Washington as ordinary voters say they are, they seem only mildly interested in doing anything about it. McCain's own staff advised him against using the issue in his campaign, but the candidate is encouraged by internal polling that found 60 percent of voters consider it important. In his stump speeches McCain remembers to cast the issue in classic conservative terms "You're never going to get a simpler, flatter tax code unless you reform the way we finance our campaigns" and in contrarian New Hampshire, he may indeed give Bush a run for his money. But nationally, says Carney, "it just hasn't caught fire." McCain will try to change that back in Washington this summer. Now that a soft-money ban has passed the House, sources close to McCain say he and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold will threaten to bring Senate business to a halt in July unless Trent Lott into puts their version up to one more debate-and-vote in the Senate. This being a presidential campaign (and the candid McCain being as beloved by the media as he is) the Arizonan will get all the Mr. Smith-style ink he wants. But there is still McConnell and still eight cowed Republicans and when McCain loses again there will still be gorgeous George and his $36 million. Underdogs make lousy presidential candidates in a party desperate for a sure thing.
The Remedies
Mitch McConnell is no bottom-dealer; he'll tell anyone who asks that the problem isn't that there's too much money in politics; it's that there's too little. In a June 28 Washington Post article titled "Why That McConnell Fellow Is So Adamant", the Kentuckian with all the cards lambastes the current "hard money" restrictions on per-person and per-PAC contribution limits as badly outdated and probably unconstitutional. "It is a fact of life that it costs money to amplify one's voice in our nation of 270 million people. It stands to reason that government restrictions on your ability to pay to project your speech impinge on your freedom of speech." As for soft money, it "isn't sinister," he says, and it wouldn't dominate party elections as it does if there were more hard money accompanied by full disclosure, so that we could all know which lobby was buying which candidate to go around.