Underdogs John McCain and Bill Bradley are firmly planted on reformist ground with proposed soft-money bans, and McCain is due for a Senate spotlight dance with the issue in October if Trent Lott keeps his word. Which leaves the outsider from Austin looking very much like an insider the money-drenched system, which disgusts nearly everyone except Mitch McConnell, has been very, very good to him. Ban soft money? Fuggeddaboudit, not with the GOP party elders ready to drive a truckload of it up to his house as soon as the primaries are over. Instead, Bush goes for the conservative classic — full disclosure. The argument, of course, is that if all the world can see whos bought how much of whom, no one will have bought much of anything. All well and good, except that its not the thousand-dollar bricks that a candidate remembers its the new wing of the library, donated to the party by Big Tobacco or Big Labor and apportioned out to candidates in the general elections, that keeps both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in thrall to special interests. Of course, if Joe Zito is our next Postmaster General, well know to be suspicious.
George W. Bush Lays Bare His Haul
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Like a diagrammed steer on a butcher-shop wall, George W. Bush wants you to know who owns what part of him. The Bush campaigns web site (www.georgewbush.com; good luck getting on there today) began Thursday to post the names and amounts of every donor to his juggernaut candidacy, from Mary Abel ($25) to Joseph Zito, a UPS vice president from Kentucky ($1,000), and all 100,000 citizens in between. Nominally, the unprecedented move is about openness and making the case that George W.s record-setting coffers (now piled high to $49 million and counting) are getting stocked by ordinary folks like you and me, one check at a time. More saliently, though, its about Bushs support for campaign finance reform or the lack thereof.