The Washington Post sensibly suggests that campaign finance reform policy must be recast and that this a job for Congress. The paper’s perspective on the current state of affairs is bleak. Post editors are unhappy with the permissive rulings of the Supreme Court and about the expanded realm of what is often, usually imprecisely, referred to as "dark money." But their emphasis is on "new ways" to improve the law and its enforcement. They suggest a focus on transparency and they call on Republicans who will soon control the Congress to reconsider their reversal on disclosure policies.

To Michael Malbin’s credit, he is taking seriously the political parties’ complaint about the terms under which they must compete for resources and influence with “outside” or independent groups. He accepts that a “rebalancing” is in order, and he proposes a compromise: more room for parties to coordinate their spending with candidates, in return for tighter enforcement of coordination rules against independent expenditure groups. He calls this a “third approach” to reform that which rejects both full de-regulation of party spending and any frontal challenge to the constitutional protections for independent spending.

If the uses of campaign finance rules to battle undue influence or its appearance will remain perpetually bogged down in disagreement – – particularly over whether the benefits of regulation justify the cost – – it does not follow that money in politics as a question for public policy has run its course. The question may have been overemphasized as one of corruption of the governmental process: corruption of the electoral process is also increasingly a concern, if less clearly and distinctly articulated. Critics of the condition of campaigns cite a range of problems with them, most recently and with rising alarm the candidates’ and parties’ loss of control to “outside groups” —Super PACs and (c) organizations—that operate under a different set of rules.

An astute piece by Mark Schmitt refocuses the argument on that point—the role of money in distorting the operation of the electoral process. He singles out for attention how a select community of donors influence the selection of candidates and the presentation of issues, raising questions of accountability and of the quality of voter engagement. This perspective has major implications for reform programs.

A recent posting here reviewed possible paths for campaign finance regulation: a determined attack on loopholes, a biding for time until scandal possibly arrives and allows for legislative reform and expanded opportunity for regulation, or an openness to rethinking the issue?

Which of these is chosen will be influenced by which aspect of campaign finance is thought to be really pressing: how much money is spent (volume); how it is spent (influence), and how much is publicly known about it (transparency). Of course, in any critique of campaign finance, from the left or right, there is a little bit of everything thrown in, but one of these three considerations is usually emphasized over the others.

This is the position I submitted to the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” Forum, on the question of the state of campaign finance regulation and possible directions for its future:

 

Forty years after the passage of the federal campaign finance laws, we have considerable experience with how they work, but the debate about them has become tired and repetitive. No one is happy with the situation as it now stands: not those who worry about corruption, not those troubled by the First Amendment cost of extensive regulation, and not those who yearn to bolster public confidence in the integrity of their government. There is everywhere evidence that reconsideration and rebuilding are in order.