Cracks in the wall

On the surface, the Senate’s failure Tuesday to get a modest campaign-finance reform package past a Republican-led filibuster looks like the same old collision with the same old brick wall. Beneath the surface, cracks are beginning to appear.

The reformers, led by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, had a net gain of just one vote since the last try. The underlying details are more encouraging — three Republican senators bucked their leadership and joined the bipartisan movement (already joined by Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) to ban unregulated soft money. The loss of two votes from pro-reform Sens. John Chafee and Arlen Specter is the result of parliamentary shenanigans, not changes of heart.

It is unfortunate that Democrats imposed rules on this round of the debate severely restricting the consideration of amendments. It clearly was a strategy designed to make GOP leadership a campaign issue, but senators do not like being told what they can or cannot propose. Sen. Chafee, who favored a stronger reform package, was particularly and rightly outspoken on the matter.

Even with Sens. Chafee and Specter on board, it was highly unlikely reformers would have collected the 60 votes needed to clear the filibuster. Democrats would still have had their campaign issue — it would, in fact have been a better issue with a closer vote. The principal reform opponents, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Sen. Mitch McConnell, would have appeared even more out of step and isolated.

But for now, Sens. Lott and McConnell can celebrate another victory, they can crow, as they’ve done so many times before, that campaign-finance reform is dead for now and for all time. They’re wrong on that point and they know it, but they’re probably right on another — there will be no reform before the 2000 election. It’s a high price to pay, but one more election awash in special-interest money, dominated by attack ads and plagued by cynicism and apathy may be just what it takes to tear down that wall.