Why campaign reform is a tough nut to crack...

Jack Abramoff has done something good. He has brought the world of lobbyists front and center. Unfortunately, campaign finance reform is about as easy to solve as social security. I'm particularly worried that, during this emotional time, Congress will create some kind of ill-considered, knee jerk legislation that they've become famous for. Here's why taking the money out of politics is tough.

1) Free speech: Is money speech? Do corporations even have a free speech right?
2) If money can't be given to politicians, how does anyone but the upper class run for office? If you took money completely out of politics then wouldn't you have a system populated by the previously wealthy?
3) What if government provides the money? Who regulates the regulators? How do you maintain independence and keep the party in power from keeping itself there?
4) What if you outlawed advertisements? Even if you could get around any Free Speech infringement you'd still be left with the question of how would the candidates get their message out? How would the voters know what each person stood for?

These are all very, very difficult questions. They are nuanced and inter-related and changing them always creates unintended consequences. I always find it helpful to imagine my "perfect world" solution and work back from that. Sometimes this method leads to untenable, unrealistic solutions. But sometimes it leads to pretty nice ones.

In this example, my perfect solution would be an independently run website that tracks the politicians' stated platforms (going into as much or as little detail as they'd like) and tracking their voting history. I think that data aggregation and objective analysis is the first step in creating a "clean" political system.

I think that companies should be prevented from making political advertisements unless they truly are "issue" ads. They shouldn't be able to mention names nor should they be able to show images of specific candidates. I recognize that some people would argue that this infringes upon their free speech. I would say that companies only exist through government fiat. The consitution makes NO mention of corporations. In fact, corporations get tax breaks based on their expenses (individuals do not) and that places them in a special category. They are government created entities and as such they should be limited by government regulation in any way that the governmetn sees fit. If individuals want to place their own ads they can and should. They can advocate individuals as much as they want. Something tells me that a public, TV endorsement of George Bush by Bill Gates probably won't carry alot of weight.