The Senate distinguished itself this week with its first major votes on campaign finance reform by soundly defeating two key provisions of a faux-reform bill. The next test is whether the Senate can resist the temptation to undermine real reform.

In a pair of closely watched votes, supporters of the real thing, McCain-Feingold, turned back Sen. Chuck Hagel’s proposals to restrict, though barely, the unregulated ”soft” money special interests pour into the political parties and to increase the amount of regulated ”hard” money that goes directly to candidates. Together, the Hagel proposals would have been a one-two punch of increased political corruption and heightened public cynicism and the Senate did well to reject them.

Now the test. Since the November election and the 50-50 tie in the Senate, some Democrats who were ardent supporters of McCain-Feingold when it didn’t have a chance of passing have cooled. Campaign finance reform was fine in theory, especially when the blame for keeping it theoretical could be blamed on Republicans. Backing reform and preventing it from occurring is being refined to an art form.

It’s a subtle art. For example, more than half the Senate’s Democrats this week joined anti-reform Republicans in backing a provision that would actually expand McCain-Feingold – expand it to the point of unconstitutionality. Restricting ”issue” ads by unions and corporations, paid for with dues and shareholder funds, within the few weeks immediately before an election is defensible because people don’t join unions and buy stocks for the purpose of influencing public policy. That is a major reason why people join the NRA, the Sierra Club and other such groups and that’s why banning their ads right before an election would be an obvious free-speech infringement.

Fervent opponents of reform regularly cite their First Amendment concerns, so court challenges are inevitable. This is where the infamous ”non-severability” clause comes in – if any part of the bill is declared unconstitutional, the entire bill is invalid. It’s a common, time-tested tactic for subverting legislation and it has no place here. By its very nature, this entire issues treads a fine line between free speech and clean politics; a flaw in one element of what surely will be a complex bill must not negate the entire effort.

One of the more straightforward elements under debate is an increase in the hard money limit; the $1,000 cap hasn’t increased since it was enacted 25 years ago. Given that few Americans contribute even that much, a hike to $5,000 or even $3,000 would only increase the influence of the wealthy many times over. Some amount of increase does seem necessary to keep the McCain-Feingold coalition together and the current compromise position of $2,000 is reasonable. Nearly $1.5 billion – hard and soft – was raised and spent during the 2000 election cycle, the connection between contributions, access and legislation is increasingly clear. Reform is needed, but only if the Senate keeps it real.