Campaign-Finance Reform vs. Big Bucks: How They'll Play in 2000

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McCain-Feingold is content to ban soft money hard money, after all, is how Iron John got his $6.1 million. Soft money, contributed by the bushel to the party and distributed as the DNC and RNC see fit, doesn't come into play until the primaries are over. For McCain, it is plenty evil enough. For Clinton and Gore, soft money was the Buddhist monks and the Lincoln bedroom. For the Republicans, it is the NRA and Big Tobacco and the source of Mitch McConnell's power. For a lonely maverick on Capitol Hill, it is the source of all that is infuriating about lawmaking: pork barrels, partisanship, gridlock and the refusal of individuals to occasionally heed their consciences instead of their parties. It is why smart men like Bill Bradley and Sam Nunn and Warren Rudman gave up on the Senate entirely, and why McCain can't seem to get a thing past Trent Lott. America seems to agree with him, but it may be long past trusting anyone in office to do anything about it.

Of course, the best way to silence a noisy presidential underdog is to throw him a bone. George W. Bush has ventured far enough out of smile-and-wave mode to make some noises along McConnell's line make a CPI adjustment to the current hard-money limits and require full disclosure of contributors. "If a grand compromise is made," says Carney, "that could be the tradeoff: a soft-money ban in exchange for more hard money." That's still a long way from "one man, one vote" the rich will still get all the access when their man wins but maybe the influence wouldn't be as widespread, and as party-driven, as it is now.

Ask most Congressmen, and theyll say they spend too much time soliciting money: A career in the House, where members have two-year terms, can be an uninterrupted string of fund-raisers. After six and a half years in office, President Clinton is still raising money the DNC, after all, needs the money to make sure Gore (or Bradley) can compete with Bush when the conventions have crowned their kings. The money hawks like McConnell are right about one thing in this media-saturated age, it costs plenty to make your voice heard above the din. But McCain and the reformers have a point too. If politicians spent less time hawking their souls and kowtowing to their party bosses, theyd have more left over for actual policy. Which is supposed to be why theyre trying to get to Washington in the first place.