I know so many people – left and right – that believe campaign finance laws are a good idea. I leaned that way myself at one time; it’s one of those ideas that seem correct while the opposite is clearly the case. George Will tirelessly points out that government control of campaign spending is not just wrong, it’s unConstitutional. Support for such legislation – such as McCain/Feingold – is not just wrong, it’s wrong-headed.
Have you ever read a Will column that wasn’t informative? And most of them, like this one, are a smile as well. Give it a look, most especially if you think Citizens United was a bad SCOTUS decision.
Thursday, Mar. 01, 2012
Super Pacs Aren’t Kingmakers
By George F. Will - Washington Post
Will’s main point has always been that campaign spending control by government is incumbent protection – the stuff of Hugo Chavez and his ilk. Will’s base question is always, “Do you really want to pay for the political campaigns – via your taxes – of candidates you despise?” Case closed, “yeahbuts” notwithstanding.
When President Obama, during a State of the Union address, claimed that the Citizens United case overturned 100 years of settled law, he was lying. There is no other explanation because Obama taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He knew that the opposite was true – the Court was increasingly uncomfortable over time with government efforts to restrict political spending. He made a false statement for political gain. I despise this aspect of President Obama’s standard operating practice which is made more egregious by what he promised as a candidate. While I agree that all politicians are guilty of this stuff, I judge Obama to have earned the Demonizer-in-Chief label far beyond any other President in my life time.
The one change I would still support is transparency. Any entity – individual or organization – that advocates for a politician, government policy or legislation should have to disclose the source of all donations above a certain size.
In the Founder’s time, almost all advocacy was anonymous or camouflaged and much of the stuff then was more inflammatory than today and more often than today, completely false. The most egregious robo-calls of Bush W and Santorum would be weak tea in those times.
The Federalist Papers were anonymously published at the time – that gives me some pause. But in the end, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, et al, I think, would have written anyway. Their concern was more humility and a reluctance regarding undue influence. But in any case, transparency is a good thing and we’d be better off demanding it.
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