Good reform

Following Sen. Fred Thompson’s Governmental Affairs Committee hearings on campaign finance abuses has been a challenge even to those of strong stomach. The stench of a political system gone to rot is overwhelming.

What a relief to all then, particularly Mainers, with an interest in clean elections was Thursday’s session, when Colby College’s Anthony Corrado took the stand and cut through the evasiveness, the double-talk, the truth-fudging with a simple three-word remedy — ban soft money.

The government professor and recognized expert on campaign finance played the historian at first, telling the committee how soft money grew from an innocent child — a series of Federal Election Commission rulings in the late 1970s that exempted donations for party-building and grass-roots activities from contribution limits — to a cash-hungry monster by 1996, gobbling some $270 million in contributions from the wealthy, the corporations and the labor unions, making grass-roots efforts and the nickels and dimes of the ordinary citizen virtually irrelevant.

From a means to bankroll such wholesome endeavors as voter-registration drives and mobilization efforts, soft money has exploded into an unregulated slush fund for attack ads posing as issue advocacy, with excessive and even illegal contributions flowing through a dizzying maze of money transfers between national, state and local party organizations that makes tracing the source impossible and disclosure a joke.

With professorial restraint, Corrado told the committee the current situation “raises serious questions about the integrity of the political process and has served to undermine public confidence.” In other words, the fix is in.

Getting the fix out won’t be easy. In the last decade, the Senate has gathered 6,742 pages of testimony, 1,063 pages of committee reports and taken 113 votes with not a shred of progress, with both parties making certain any reform measure contains provisions the other will find wholly unacceptable.

This time, there is reason for optimism. President Clinton has made it clear Congress will not go home for the year until significant reform is passed. Congress, with the exception of a few of the terminally hard of head, seems to understand it dare not go home until that time.

The bill under discussion undoubtably will be called McCain-Feingold, but questions regarding the contents leave it uncertain whether reform will be real or a sham, whether the parties can resist the temptation to gore the other’s ox.

Congress has tried reform the hard way, the partisan way, and failed. Here’s the easy way — adopt the League of Women Voters “Five Ideas for Practical Campaign Reform,” a simple, clear and fair plan developed by Corrado and four other experts representing a broad swath of the political spectrum.

Ban soft money. Close the issue advocacy loophole. Beef up the FEC’s enforcement powers. Impose a modest requirement for free TV time. Give a tax credit for small, individual contributions. It’s McCain-Feingold cut down to the basics. Everybody wins, except those who want to buy, or sell, our government.

Corrado has an interesting way of describing the League’s plan — good. “Not perfect,” he says. “In the past, different groups have gone for perfect and nothing’s been done. Perfect has gotten in the way of good. We’re not trying to solve everything at once. We’re just trying to get reform started.”

The time to get started is now. The Thompson hearings have done their job — the rot has been exposed. A simple plan to clean things up is at hand. Lawmakers should clear their desks and get down to it. Like campaign finance, no one expects Congress to be perfect, but good is not too much to ask.