Lott lucks out

Senate leaders, who only want their fellow Americans to have the best government money can buy, were in a jam. The House had revolted, as had a slim majority from their own chamber. Soft-headed elements of the press and the public persisted in referring to those whose generosity keeps the wheels of legislation turning as special interest groups. The information-sharing that goes on between contributors and Congress increasingly was being confused with bribery. Once again, campaign finance reform threatened the republic and only a weary filibuster stood in defense.

They desperately needed a break and, just when things looked blackest, they caught one. Call it their Lucky Starr.

Last week was to have been crunch time for the McCain-Feingold reform bill. After all, a simple majority of 52 senators (all 45 Democrats and seven Republicans brave enough to buck leadership, including Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) had voted for the modest reform measure ealier in the summer. Just last month, the House found the courage to pass the similar Shays-Meehan bill, over the objections of its leadership. Several recent reports noted a sharp upswing in unregulated, soft-money donations to both parties by Big Tobacco, Big Banking, Big Insurance and Oil and Real Estate and Entertainment and Computers and Law and Labor. The correlation between giving and pending legislation was observed. Poll after poll showed the public was torn between anger and apathy. The unthinkable — that eight more Republicans would defect and break Majority Leader Trent Lott’s filibuster — suddenly seemed quite thinkable.

Then came the Starr Whitewater report, the raunchiest description of a failed real-estate deal in the history of English literature. The public had every right to be disturbed by the conduct of its president, the media had a story that sold itself, Senate leadership had just the reason it needed to do nothing. Suddenly, campaign-finance reform could have been a Texas-sized meteor making a beeline for Earth and no one would have noticed. As an attention-getter, dirty politics just can’t compete with just plain dirt.

And so the McCain-Feingold vote last Thursday, the day Judge Starr delivered $40 million worth of pornography to Congress, was the same as last time — 52-48, a simple majority, but not enough to break Sen. Lott’s stranglehold on the legislative process. Nobody noticed and nothing changed.

Nothing except that the influence of money on politics is becoming more blatant. Soft-money contributions for the current election cycle (Jan. 1, 1997 to June 30, 1998) total more than $115 million, nearly $70 million to the Republican Party and $45 million to the Democrats. That’s the most ever for a non-presidential cycle, up 131 percent from 1993-94. It’s unnecessary to list which industries and interest-sectors are in the the top-echelon, $3 million-plus club — just know that at the top of Congress’s to-do list are such issues as oil royalties, banking, securities and insurance reform, health care and patient rights, computers and antitrust, and of course the old stand-by, tobacco.

What to do? It seems awfully naive to hope that the voters will indicate their disapproval of the 48 legislation-for-sale senators by voting them out of office. Most are far too good at bringing home the road, bridge and other pork-barrel projects to get beat just for doing what they’ve always done. And it’s awfully depressing to think that reform inevitably will occur when voter apathy reaches a crisis state. Even more depressing is the theory that campaign-finance reform needs a scandal of Lewinskian proportions to make it over the top.

It needs what Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona and co-author of reform, prescribes — patience. He intends to withdraw the bill from any further consideration this year and to work at gently and calmly convincing just eight more senators that cleaner elections and an end to the money chase are in everyone’s interest. If the other 51 senators are sincere in their support and work with McCain, it should be doable. And maybe next time Sen. Lott won’t get lucky.