A strength of any reform discussion is careful attention to the role of campaign finance in lobbying activity. Critics of standard reform proposals complain that “insiders” are attempting to regulate the political activity of “outsiders”, but this objection has less force when campaign finance restrictions fall more heavily on the insiders – – on legislators and the lobbyists who may build relationships with them by raising and giving campaign money.

So Senator Michael Bennet, supported by the reform community, has developed a bill entitled the Lobbying and Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2015, which pursues reform objectives from the "inside." It would expand the number of those who are required to register as lobbyists, and it would limit the influence they amass through the fundraising known as bundling. And the Members of Congress that they lobby could not solicit them for contributions when Congress is in legislative session. The focus here is on campaign finance as a lubricant of successful lobbying, and on any temptation in official circles to link the performance of the public’s business to campaign support.

The next question is-- how would this reform, if enacted, work, and how effective would it be in meeting the goals set for it?

A few years ago, after the enactment of McCain Feingold, the Federal Election Commission began issuing implementing rules, and there were not well received in reform quarters.  It was objected that the agency was ignoring Congressional intent and gutting the law.  One line of attack was possible Hill intervention to disapprove the rules pursuant to the Congressional Review Act.   At a lunch with Senators to discuss this possibility, a prominent reform leader told the assembled legislators that if they did not reject the rules and hold the FEC to account, the public “would rise up” in protest. The public uprising did not occur, neither the Senate nor the House took action, and the reform critics took their cases to court—with some but not complete success.

But the hope for public pressure remains alive, and as Matea Gold reports in The Washington Post, there is some thought that with Super PACs and the like, things have gotten so out of hand that voters will insist on action.  The ranking of campaign finance among other priorities important to voters remains low, but by one reading, it is inching up the list.  Any upward movement is taken to be, maybe, a sign of more popular passion to come.  This is always the wish.  In the annals of modern campaign finance, it is never a wish come true.

But campaign finance history also shows that elected officials can be moved to take up this cause, and the same Post story that speculates about changes in public opinion records, more concretely, restiveness on the part of politicians.  And this could make a difference.  Candidates and officeholders cited in the story, such as Senator Lindsey Graham, worry about the small number of Americans—“about a 100 people”-- who can shape the course of a campaign with their money.  The issue for Senator Graham is not, apparently, the cost to political equality: it is the unfairness to candidates who find that these wealthy activists “are going to be able to advocate their cause at the expense of your cause.”

Long in the field of campaign finance, well versed in its triumphs and tribulations, Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center objects strongly to the suggestions for disclosure reform I co-authored with Professor Samuel Issacharoff.  It’s all a magic trick, he argues, that accomplishes the reverse of its stated intention: it moves contributions into the dark, raises the risk corruption and disregards the lessons of Watergate.  The public is not “gullible”: it won’t buy it.

It is difficult not to imagine that Mr. Noble is engaged in theater of his own, something like the aerial feat performed yesterday by the mailman in a gyrocopter who touched down on the Capitol grounds with a similarly passionate appeal for campaign finance reform.  This gentleman, undoubtedly sincere but less clearly prudent,  entitled his project “Kitty Hawk”, after the Wright Brothers’ fabled flight in North Carolina in 1903.  Larry, if he were maneuvering a craft, might have  named it “Watergate," and he would have refreshed the message by 70 years, with only another four decades to go to cross over into the current century and to the present time.

Has the Supreme Court created an environment “pregnant with possibility of corruption?”  The Washington Post Editorial Board makes this case, building it around the rise of super PACs, and it locates the problem in the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Citizens United.  The argument does not clarify especially well the choices ahead in campaign finances, or the role of Citizens United in shaping them, or the means of grappling with bona fide corruption.  The Post’s miscue is the insistence on keeping campaign finance reform tied tightly to the corruption debate—or, more accurately, tied up with it, with nowhere to go.

The Brennan Center regularly devotes space to a review of the literature on the money-in-politics debate, and this week, Benjamin Brickner discusses an insightful paper on “coordination” by Professor Michael Gilbert of the University of Virginia and Brian Barnes, a J.D. candidate there.  The authors present the case that anti-coordination rules don’t operate to prevent corruption achieved through independent spending--and that they can’t, even if strengthened.  There are too many ways around coordination restrictions: a spender can comply with the law, spending “independently” for a candidate, but still offer the politician value that can be “cashed in” later.  If coordination rules do not deter corruption but do limit speech, then their constitutionality is thrown into question.

It is not difficult for an independent group to figure out what the politician may need and appreciate. Public sources of useful information are plentiful and these can be supplemented by private polling and other expert advice; and if there is a risk of missing the mark and timing or targeting an ad imperfectly, there remains value to be conveyed.  As Gilbert and Barnes point out, this is a question only of the efficiency of the expenditure, and some ground can be made up by just spending more money.  A politician can still be grateful for $75,000 of discounted benefit from an ad that cost $100,000.  As Gilbert and Barnes frame the point, “[U]nless the law prohibits candidates from publicizing their platforms and strategies, and outsiders from paying attention, then outsiders will always have enough information to make expenditures that convey at least some value.”