Soft money legislation too soft on politicians

For the first time since the Republicans took control of Congress, the Senate began debating on Monday on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. In the March 19 issue of The New York Times, John McCain said, “Any voter, with a healthy understanding of human nature and who notices the vast amounts of money solicited and received by politicians cannot help but believe that we are unduly influenced by our benefactors’ generosity.” You don’t say. Does this mean that my all-important vote, the one that so many men fought and died for, is worth less than a check from Philip Morris?

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), who represents a state with the motto “Equality before the law,” sponsored a competing corruption-happy reform bill. He said, “The answer to reforming our system is not to shut people out or diminish the abilities of our institutions to participate in the process.”

Hey, Chuck, I have $10.65 in my bank account. I don’t even have enough money to make an ATM withdrawal. I am shut out of the “process,” and by process, I assume you mean buying influence from those in power and swaying the outcome of elections.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said eliminating soft money would weaken the two-party system. Boy, wouldn’t that be terrible. What would we have done if we had had a serious candidate other than George W. and Al? If we got rid of soft money, third-party candidates, people who refuse to sell out to our two major parties, would finally have a legitimate shot at being elected to a major office.

Of course, most of our current senators are direct beneficiaries of this system. No one asked Louis XVI to abolish the monarchy in France; rebels just brought out the guillotine. Fidel Castro isn’t going to vote for free elections, Jiang Zemin isn’t going to support the United Nations Human Rights Coalition and Trent Lott is not going to vote for serious campaign finance reform, period.

Whenever I begin to wonder about my position in the world, I like to think about America Online founder Steve Case. Not because I’ve got a thing for middle-aged CEOs, but because he went to the same high school as me. Okay, and because he’s got a really nice smile.

Steve owns the largest media corporation in the world. Ever since AOL bought Time Warner, Ted Turner is Steve’s bitch! If Steve’s company had its way, they would use their domination of the cable market to block Fox News Channel, CNN’s competition, from my connection. I’m sorry, they already tried to do that in New York.

Unfortunately, Steve is just the tip of the iceberg in the Arctic Sea of corporate greed, and Batman just isn’t flying fast enough to save us because I think Steve owns him too.

Traditionally, the government’s most important function has been to protect us from foreign attack. Here in 2001, a foreign attack is about as likely as a guest appearance by John Silber on the Howard Stern Show. Today, our biggest threats are our own corporations.

China isn’t destroying our wildlife. North Korea never leaked toxic waste into our lakes. Last year, the tobacco industry killed 400,000 U.S. citizens, according to our government’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, somehow, all meaningful attempts at tobacco regulation have been defeated. How is this possible? Isn’t a vast reduction of deaths something most citizens support?

We need to level the playing field. We need to give all serious presidential candidates free access to our airwaves, instead of spending billions of dollars every election cycle to the networks. Any candidate who can get on enough ballots to win the electoral majority should have an opportunity to face the nation, not just the candidates who can purchase it. This suggestion is the only way Americans can draw their own conclusions and not rely on filtered ones by the news media or those influenced by money and slick advertising.

We need to close the loophole that allows millionaires to finance their own campaigns without limit. Remember Steve Forbes? He had no qualifications, other than money he inherited from his daddy, but that money bought him legitimacy as a candidate. Steve can buy a mansion, a private jet, a tropical island or a marriage to Anna Nicole Smith. He can buy anything, but he should not be able to buy a chance at the presidency.

Finally, and most importantly, we need to put an end to soft money, the unlimited contributions to political parties that they use to run thinly disguised advertisements for their candidates. Soft money completely undermines our current financing system.

The McCain-Feingold bill would eliminate soft money. Hagel’s version would set an annual limit at $60,000, down from the current infinity. I guess that puts me right back in the running against Exxon! Oh wait, that was a comma, not a decimal point.

But, like Louis XVI, they’re not going to do it on their own. Nothing is ever going to change until we yell louder than the dollar can.