I don’t believe that the largest businesses actually decide the outcomes of elections. With the existing regulations, no candidate can get all the money needed to run for a major office without obtaining support from a pretty diverse group of interests. The ability to persuade those groups to contribute money is, I think, a pretty good proxy for the ability of the candidate to do the difficult work of implementing public policy around the many, vocal opinions held in our diverse society.

The solution to “bad” speech (and buying a TV commercial is speech) is always more speech.

It’s not a murky area at all. The core of the First Amendment is to uphold the right of the people to speak on political subjects. The right of assembly is the right to work together to accomplish something politically that no individual could accomplish alone. Campaign finance “reform” cuts to the very heart of those freedoms and should be opposed on principle.

It should also be opposed on pragmatic grounds, because all experience with prior reform laws has shown that money simply finds a way. People (and corporations are run by people and supported by people, with people as their customers) who are affected by government actions (and we all are) will find a way to influence those actions. That’s not corruption, that’s the way the system is supposed to work.

If you don’t like it, get some people together to run commercials showing which campaign ads are total lies and which are half-truths. Me, I would love for the American people to get sick and tired of 30 second TV campaign spots, but they aren’t. They could do all sorts of research on candidates and policies on the web and in the papers today, but they don’t. You can’t make them, no matter how hard you try. Your solution is to forcibly prevent them from seeing the 30-second spots, in the hopes that they will then be more sensible in making their voting decisions. That’s not going to work.

I think we should work backwards to contain the political manipulations that have the most consensus: such as eliminating the ability of Unions and Corporations to contribute to elections; and Public Finance of elections, and non-partisan redistricting. Then we regularly adjust the law to level the playing field among money and influence in elections.

I don’t believe the framers intended the largest businesses to decide the outcomes of elections.

Can newspapers still print endorsements, in your scheme? Who gets to decide whether a group of people are allowed to speak out publicly on paid TV and who is not? If 20 of my friends and I want to get together and put on an ad saying why we oppose Candidate X, can we do so? What provision of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to pass a law prohibiting that? Does it matter whether all 20 of my friends work for pharmaceutical companies or not?

Your responses show that you want to restrict political speech because of its content and the effect you believe it has on the voters. Your message is that the voters are sheep, easily persuaded by whoever spends the most money on TV ads, and you want to put “experts” in charge of censoring political speech to protect the sheeple.

It is entirely appropriate that “special interest� groups of like-minded citizens pool their money and use it to attempt to influence elections. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

It’s a problem when money can buy anything in our country. We have to ask ourselves if we oppose the unchecked power of money in our political system.

I think it’s a problem that only wealthy lawyers seem to make into powerful government positions. Do you?

How about credit card companies writing our bankruptcy legislation, do you think that’s a problem?

“The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak.â€? – Woodrow Wilson

I like Anonymous Liberal’s idea because in my experience about half of the unseemly ads are spin (like the Cleland thing) and half are outright falsehoods. At least the commission would take care of most of the second — and I think that’s the only thing they should check for — and there’s no reason why outside 527s couldn’t be apart of the same process. It is voluntary after all.

Plus I think the actual contribution would be greater than we might anticipate. Accurate but sleezy ads have (at least to me) a feel that is distinct and you can almost smell the manipulation. On the other hand, outright lies are often presented more as objective truth and are easier to use as an authority. At least if people were arguing about the intrepretation instead of the facts that’d be a big step up.

I am all for a fair fight of facts and philosophy. I am not in favor of protecting the bully and back room manipulators.

People have a right to freedom of speech and of assembly. Freedom of assembly means they can work TOGETHER to petition the government for redress of their grievances. It is entirely appropriate that “special interest” groups of like-minded citizens pool their money and use it to attempt to influence elections. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

While the Supreme Court has been too soft (in my view) on enforcing the First Amendment in relation to campaign finance reform laws, they’re not going to ultimately approve laws prohibiting political speech by groups of like-minded individuals. What McCain-Feingold did was to encourage money to be steered away from candidates and to organizations with less accountability, the 527s, just as previous campaign finance reform efforts led to PACs and other “ills.”

If Senator Obama is jumping on the campaign finance reform bandwagon (which in reality is an incumbency protection measure), that’s yet one more reason that I will not support him.

It seems to me that the recent debate in the Senate about Iraq is primarily about what would be in the headlines in political ads in ’08.

In terms of incentives, I guess I’d like to see some sort of formula where a candidate could take a pledge to run a certain percentage of ads that only focused on his own record or platform, with perhaps some incentive for candidates to do so (either an endorsement from some sort of nonpartisan body or maybe even a monetary incentive with some matching campaign funds for those candidates who do this).

Glenn Greenwald’s idea is interesting. I’d like to see a state try it out and see if it works, but I can imagine a lot of lawyering and corruption involved in that process. “It depends on what the meaning of is is…”

To C Stanley,
What would you think of banning all political advertising on television that mentioned candidates by name?