Getting & spending.

Laws governing political campaign financing can appear as abstruse as Levitical dietary restrictions. The distinctions between "hard" and "soft" money, "candidate advocacy" and "issue advocacy," even between political parties and certain political action committees (PACs) are difficult enough to draw in the abstract and often become meaningless in practice. After months of congressional and Justice Department investigation into alleged violations of the election finance laws by the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign, much has been learned about the enormous amount of money raised and spent in the 1996 election, but no unambiguous picture of wrongdoing has yet emerged. Did the efforts of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore campaign, much of it directed from the White House, stretch the law governing the use of soft money up to 'the breaking point? It seems clear that it did. Did it violate the letter of the law? Attorney General Janet Reno says her ongoing investigation has turned up no credible evidence that such violations occurred. Republicans scoff loudly at this (while raising a good deal more money than their Democratic rivals and, as House Speaker Newt Gingrich's ethics violations indicate, often employing dubious methods themselves). What the electorate at large makes of it, beyond a growing alienation from both parties, is hard to say.

Much of the reason for such sharply divergent understandings of the facts - aside from politics, of course - rests with the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and with the Supreme Court's tortuous interpretation of the act's constitutionality. Passed in the aftermath of the Watergate fundraising scandals, FECA reforms limited the amount of money that could be spent by candidates and their supporters. In 1976, however, the Supreme Court (Buckley v. Valeo) ruled that certain provisions of FECA were unconstitutional - a violation of the First Amendment's protections of political speech. Individuals, for example, could not be prevented from spending their own money on their own candidacies. Thus political wunderkinds such as Ross Perot and Steve Forbes were greatly advantaged. The Court did uphold spending restrictions if a compelling government interest could be strictly established - certain large contributions, for example, could be outlawed because they might create the "appearance of corruption." Thus the Court stipulated that individuals may not contribute more than $1000 and PACs no more than $5000 to any one candidate. That's called "hard" money. In principle, however, political money is considered a form of free speech, and the Court said that money spent on issues or to help build political parties - so-called "soft" money - could not be restricted.

Now for the hard part. In the 1996 election the Democratic party allegedly spent $22 million in "soft" money on pre-election television "issues ads" that were little more than thinly disguised commercials for Clinton's re-election. (According to Common Cause, the Republicans spent $9 million for similar "issue" ads for Bob Dole.) Legally, as long as the ads refrained from explicitly endorsing Clinton's candidacy, the party could spend as much as it could raise. How that money was raised and spent, who conceived and directed the advertising campaign, and exactly what role President Bill Clinton played in all of this are the questions at the heart of the ongoing investigations. Republicans charge that Clinton violated FECA by his participation in the soft money effort. But it is not clear what level of involvement candidates are permitted when it comes to soft money expenditures. Historically, both parties have played fast and loose with "issues" advertising, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that such putatively "independent" party advocacy is protected by the First Amendment.

Given the shell game that campaign financing has become, it is understandable that the McCain-Feingold bill debated in the Senate last month should attract the support of those who understand the need to limit the influence of money. It is far from certain, however, that the bill would not worsen an already dismal situation. In its initial form, McCain-Feingold required that broadcasters provide free television time to candidates willing to accept voluntary limits on campaign spending. However, objections from broadcasters forced that provision to be shelved, and the bill's main thrust is now an outright ban on soft money. But banning soft money is probably unconstitutional and certainly futile. If lobbyists and special interest groups are prohibited from giving to political parties, they will most surely go directly to the voters themselves. Far from reducing the role of money in politics, the ban on soft money will in all likelihood fatally reduce the influence of political parties, giving us an even more balkanized politics and a further commercialization of political discourse and the public sphere.

McCain-Feingold was closer to the mark in its original version. Money spent on television advertising is what drives the high cost of political campaigns. Free air time is at least potentially one of the best hopes for combating the influence of money. (Full and immediate disclosure of who gives how much to whom is another.) The airwaves, after all, do not belong to the television industry, but to the public. Broadcasters are licensed by the federal government, and they are obligated to provide public-service programming.What could be of greater public service than the promotion of political discourse and debate? Access to free television will also allow political candidates to spend less time raising money and to be less in the debt of their financial backers.

Any hope for campaign finance reform will continue to be hedged in by moneyed interests on one side and the Supreme Court's strict equation between political speech and political spending on the other. Whatever its moral and political merits, the practical and legal obstacles to imposing strict limits on campaign spending seem insurmountable for the moment. But if we cannot limit money, it may still be possible to make money less important. Free television time can help do that. Given the unintended consequences of past campaign spending reforms, the time may be ripe for regulations that combat the power of money, not by restricting spending, but by lowering the cost of competing.