“All Glory Is Fleeting.” — Spoken to Roman generals in triumphal parades Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold have chalked up a major victory for the cause of campaign finance reform. After six years of being defeated out of hand, their bill passed the Senate and is meant to address the issue of “soft money,” unregulated donations that corporations give to political parties rather than candidates.
Hard money, or money given directly to candidates, has been regulated since 1974, when in a post-Watergate drive to clean up its act, Congress passed the Campaign Finance Reform Act, limiting said donations to $1,000. McCain-Feingold would raise the limit to $3,000 and flat-out ban “soft” donations from being used for specific candidates.
Obviously, this is one bill that neither party has much love for, but thanks to McCain, a former Vietnam fighter pilot, and Feingold, his Democratic opposite number, they’ve succeeded in knocking wave after wave of problem amendments out of the sky. The question now is: Can they continue the victories?

During the Senate battle, McCain, in true fighter-pilot form, shot down a number of Republican time bombs meant to scuttle the bill. These included “paycheck protection,” requiring labor unions to seek permission from each member before using dues for political contributions. I am in favor of this, as it’s just plain wrong to force people to contribute to a political cause or candidate they may be in opposition to as a precondition for membership in a union and thus employment.
However, the Republicans weren’t being altruistic or idealistic when they proposed the rider. It was a calculated, cynical ploy. They knew that if it were attached, the Democrats would have no choice but to vote against the whole bill. It would be an automatic 0-6 record for John and Russ.
Instead, the Republican leadership crashed and burned.
Next came the “nonseverability clause,” a bizarre piece of language that the Repubs and the Demos tried to insert. The clause would have rendered the entire bill DOA should the U.S. Supreme Court strike down any one provision. Usually the opposite (such that any unconstitutional portions are simply ejected from the bill) is placed in laws as a matter of course. You can guess why they went to the trouble to put a “nonseverability clause” in this law.
Nonseverability went down in flames like so many MiGs. And McCain-Feingold passed by a comfortable, but not too comfortable margin.
Bush will sign this, or sit on it and let it pass into law without a signature, rather than make a ruckus with a veto. Bush won’t risk a veto battle with McCain right now; he wants all attention on his tax cut. But we’re not there yet. McCain-Feingold still faces its biggest fight yet.
First and foremost is the Conference Committee, which is convened to smooth out the differences between House and Senate versions of the bill. Expect some more amateur theatrics here, as both Democrats and Republicans will likely try to sabotage the conference version before it faces final votes. Look for paycheck protection, nonseverability and the other monkeywrenches to be wielded again as big donors, who have the ears of our antagonists, try one last-ditch push to make a bill nobody would willingly swallow.
Should McCain and Feingold be able to win on Capitol Hill, they still have to worry about the Supreme Court.
Buckley v. Valleo, from 1976, posited the ludicrous assertion that money is speech. The case revolved around the post-Watergate reforms, which placed a cap on hard money, as well as on expenditures from soft money and personal wealth. In Buckley, the court struck down the spending cap, stating that “a restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.”
It’ll be interesting to see how the court reacts to McCain-Feingold, should the challenge already prepared by a bizarre coalition of special interests, from the ACLU to the NRA, materialize. It all depends on the court’s interpretation of “free speech.” Buckley allowed candidates to spend from their personal war chests. Now the debate is whether political parties must be allowed to buy attack ads on behalf of candidates. In my own opinion, as far as the court’s concerned, anything’s possible.
So there’s only one question I can ask now that McCain and Feingold have won a major battle: However, whither the war?