John McCain's War on Political Speech

How the Arizona senator and other campaign finance reformers use the law to muffle critics and trample the First Amendment.

Bradley Smith from the December 2005 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Wouldn't suggesting that corporations support the Brennan Center to provide legislative support to Sen. McCain on the issue that made his national reputation carry the same potential for blackmail and favoritism as corporate donations to political campaigns? Yet there is no suggestion that we should have broad prophylactic prohibition of that kind of fund raising--despite the fact that doing so would not only address this very real "appearance of corruption"; it would do much less to infringe on the free speech of the citizenry than McCain's treasured campaign finance restrictions.

McCain's Soft-Money Machine

Here's another situation reported by The New York Times in March 2005: "In a small office a few miles from Capitol Hill, a handful of top advisers to Senator John McCain run a quiet campaign. They promote his crusade against special interest money in politics. They send out news releases promoting his initiatives. And they raise money--hundreds of thousands of dollars, tapping some McCain backers for more than $50,000 each."

These advisers work for a group called the Reform Institute, founded in 2001 after Sen. McCain's failed presidential bid. The chairman of the board of the Reform Institute is...John McCain. If you go to look at the press releases at reforminstitute.org, you will see that virtually every release mentions Sen. McCain in the first sentence. Not paragraph, sentence. Who runs the Reform Institute? Well, the president is Richard Davis, who is paid over $110,000 a year. Who is Richard Davis? He was John McCain's 2000 campaign manager. The counsel to the Reform Institute is Trevor Potter, whose law firm is paid more than $50,000 a year for the work. Who is Trevor Potter? Why, he was legal counsel to McCain 2000! The finance director of the Reform Institute is a woman named Carla Eudy. She was finance director for McCain 2000. The communications director is Crystal Benton; she was McCain's press secretary.

Recently the Reform Institute, which bills itself as "a thoughtful, moderate voice for reform in the campaign finance and election administration debates," launched what it calls the Natural Resources Stewardship Project. And what does natural resources stewardship have to do with "campaign finance and election administration"? As near as I can tell, its only connection to campaign finance and election administration is, as the institute's site tells us, that "Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have introduced the Climate Stewardship Act" in Congress. And, of course, John McCain is planning to run for president again, and his signature issue, other than campaign finance regulation, is global warming. To run the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, the institute hired John Raidt, who, you guessed it, served 15 years working on "environmental initiatives" for Sen. McCain.

And how is the Reform Institute funded? With contributions, in six figures or more, from individuals and corporations, including the cable company Cablevision. Cable companies are constantly before the Senate Commerce Committee, which Sen. McCain chaired at the time of Cablevision's contribution. In fact, Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute around the same time its officials were testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee. Appearance of corruption, anyone?

Looking Ahead

So what's next? Right now the FEC is conducting a rule making that could regulate the Internet. Because the McCain-Feingold bill did not mention Internet regulation in its list of terms, we at the FEC passed a rule exempting online speech. So Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), the main House sponsors of McCain-Feingold, filed suit, joined by Sens. McCain and Feingold in an amicus brief. They argued that the Internet exemption was improper and got a federal district court judge to agree. This rulemaking is the result.

What will come of it, I don't know, but I'll tell you this: Right now in First Amendment jurisprudence there is more protection for simulated child pornography, flag burning, tobacco advertising, or burning a cross in an African-American residential neighborhood than there is for running an advertisement that merely mentions a congressman's name within 60 days of an election. And why?

We're told this is to prevent corruption and to promote ethics. Well, I would suggest that ethics and government are served by political competition, and that regulation of campaign finances in fact serves as protectionism for incumbent politicians. It diminishes the relative influence of individuals and political parties, thus increasing the relative influence of politicians, corporate lobbyists, the media, and large foundations. At the same time it strikes at the very heart of self-government, which depends upon the idea that individual citizens outside of Washington can engage in an open exchange of ideas and criticisms of today's powers that be.

But perhaps most important, campaign finance regulation is based on the notion that government must be empowered to act on and order the lives of citizens without influence or pushback from those very same citizens. The "reformers" believe that politics should be reserved for the folks inside the Beltway who can handle it. In short, McCain-Feingold supporters grasp that changes in the rules--changes enacted in the name of ethics--can enhance their influence and foster their political aims by silencing their political opponents. Until we recognize this, and recognize that the very purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent such changes in the rules, the war on political speech will continue.�

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Pingback| 11.22.09 @ 11:38PM

Of Everything That Stands, The End links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Aren’t we the one’s who voted for “ compassionate progressive conservatism,” and stumped for “ Wilsonian” McCain? Seriously. McCain drastically infringed our right of free speech, and “suspended” his campaign to pass TARP. What about Bush? Don’t even get me started … No Child Left Behind, prescription drugs, never-ending war, stimulus, TARP,…