Larry Lessig is not the first single-issue candidate in American presidential history, but from Tom Mann’s perspective, he picked the wrong issue.  Mann says that to isolate money-in-politics, to treat it as the key to solving all other problems, is to “dumb down” politics.  He takes this to be a disservice to voters, a deception, and a diversion from the discussion of other issues that have to be tackled and the successful resolution of which will not decided by campaign funding.

It is a harsh attack, and a surprising one from Mann, a stalwart supporter of campaign finance reform.  Lessig has responded by suggesting that Mann is in no position to accuse him of gross oversimplification: he notes that Mann has singled out the Republican Party as the culprit in the dysfunctional polarization of national politics, and this, Lessig contends, is an even “simpler story” than campaign finance about what ails the country.

Larry Lessig, articulate and impassioned, keeps at the task he has set himself in arguing the case for political reform. It has led him to experiment: as in setting up a Super PAC, which is not what a campaign finance reformer would be expected to do. Now he is on to something new, considering a run as a Referendum President who would bid for a mandate for political reform and then, if successful, serve only as long as needed to bring the reform about. Then power would pass to the Vice President and he, Lessig, would depart the stage.

This “referendum” candidacy is also a reform proposal, a call to evaluate on exceptional criteria the merits of a Presidential campaign and the performance of a President. It can be considered separately from the soundness of the specific measures that, as President, he would press Congress to adopt on campaign finance, voting rights and redistricting. The question the candidacy raises is how he proposes to campaign for those measures, and what sort of Presidency he is arguing for, and one has to assume that he is promising a candidacy, then a Presidency, that meets fundamental expectations for a better, reformed politics. It would take the voters seriously, engaging them in a substantive exchange on the merits of this way of thinking about the election of a President.

The court’s worst blunder, she said, was its 2010 decision in Citizens United "because of what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office.”

This is what Justice Ginsburg has said, but is not clear without a bit of guesswork which she means.  But it seems to be about “what has happened to elections", including cost, and not so much how the conduct of elections translates into bad or corrupt government.  One cannot read too much into it: the comment is short, but her few words describe a problem with the electoral process.

Distortion of that process, or the interference with its ideal functioning, is a major worry for those observing money in politics, separate from any consequences for the integrity of government that the politicians, once elected, are responsible for running. This electoral corruption of elections is different from the quid pro quo corruption of government that animates the strictly constitutional and legal debate.

In Friday’s New York Times, Stuart Stevens refers to just the electoral impacts of campaign finance when discussing the effects of Super PACs in altering the character of Presidential primary competition.  A number of the now 17 candidates entering the Republican Presidential primary have jumped in with the confidence that, with a Super PAC at their side, they have the resources to hang in there for a spell. Doing well in the first primaries is no long an invariable condition of viability.  Stevens is not all that worried about it: he likes the free-for-all.  Others are less sure.

These understandings of “corruption” can be, and often are, conflated, but are very different.  The case against Super PACs as agents for electoral corruption is straightforward: a handful of individuals can float a candidacy lacking in more general public support and keep it artificially alive.  The costs increase for other candidates; debate stages are crowded with contenders who are not truly viable over the long-term; and the mechanism by which public preference is measured is skewed.

Perhaps for this reason, it goes unnoticed that arguments directly related to government corruption—and proposals for reform based on them—seem, by contrast, increasingly clouded and tenuous.

For all the study expended on public corruption and possible measures to control it, few take seriously or pay much attention to the “ethics” rules that Congress makes for itself.  Something interesting is going on here.  On the one hand, supporters of campaign finance reform are quick to defend Congress’ legislative handiwork over the years.  Defenders of McCain-Feingold deny that it was infected with incumbent self-interest.  Upholding the new law against constitutional challenge, the Court in McConnell v. FEC even situated it within a long history of Congressional steps to combat corruption, characterized as   “careful” and “cautious” and deserving of deference. 540 U.S. 93, 117 (2010)[citations omitted].  Yet when Members prescribe rules to govern their conduct in dealings with supporters or donors, the applause is thin and it is rare that legislators get even the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible that an important part of the story has been missed, or underplayed, and that the Supreme Court may have the opportunity to rectify, if only indirectly, the imbalance.

George Will looks at Super PACs and sees the consequences of "reform": it's a mess, he writes, the result of pressures for a “thoroughly regulated politics” that drives political actors to evade foolish rules.  The Constitution requires “unregulated politics”: recent reform experience shows that any other course is sure to end in a bad place.  The choice he sees is between thoroughly regulated campaign finance, which is untenable, or none at all.

An alternative account of unsatisfactory reform experience would focus on the type of regulatory program that has dominated the policy debate.  The FEC is somehow expected to regulate campaign finance as other agencies regulate food or drugs, or fair commercial practice, and the FEC best equipped for the job would be re-structured to take the politics out of its composition and operation.  Underlying all of this is a belief that the right rules enforced by the right people, and repeatedly revised in the light of experience, will bring errant political behavior under control and end cheating.  By this definition the “right” rule is one that attacks a questionable practice at its source, however complicated the rule and however challenging it will be to enforce it.