Bush And Rove Blew It
By Randall Nunn (12/12/03)
On December 10, 2003, the United States Supreme Court handed down one of the worst decisions of the last 100 years, when they upheld key parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as McCain-Feingold. Among other things, the decision forbids pre-election criticism of incumbents by corporations, including not-for-profit corporations (i.e., interest groups), thus giving a tremendous advantage to incumbents running for reelection as well as to the liberal press. As Justice Scalia said in his concurring and dissenting opinion, "this is a sad day for freedom of speech."
As a candidate, President Bush had said he would veto the measure. After Congress passed the McCain-Feingold bill, President Bush chose not to veto the bill, apparently concluding that it was good politics not to veto a "campaign finance reform" bill and that the U.S. Supreme Court would "fix it" in any event. Well, they "fixed it" all right, and we will pay the price. The drive for Bush’s reelection got, at most, a minor boost by Bush’s signature of McCain-Feingold while the country lost a significant portion of its First Amendment freedoms. This was a blunder of the first magnitude.
A number of commentators speculated at the time that Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, was pushing Bush to sign the McCain-Feingold bill because it was "good politics" to sign anything with "campaign finance reform" in the title and would give the Republicans an advantage in the coming election cycle, since the Republicans were able to raise "hard money" while the Democrats would be hurt by the ban on "soft money". The worst feature of the legislation is the provision that stifles criticism of incumbents by corporations and interest groups 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election. One of the purported justifications for the restrictions on "issue ads" was to protect candidates against "negative campaigning" or "attack ads". But in reality, this law will have the effect of further entrenching incumbents since criticism of their opponents will be given wide dissemination by virtue of their incumbency while interest groups desiring to oppose incumbents, such as the National Rifle Association or the Sierra Club, will be silenced. The press is not affected, so they can write all the "attack" editorials they wish and slant all of their reporting to favor particular candidates without competition from those interest groups that may oppose specific candidates. The liberal media will certainly be celebrating this decision. In short, Bush and Rove may have given themselves an ever-so-slight advantage in 2004 and almost certainly have given us a government in the future consisting of a higher percentage of reelected incumbents with a decidedly liberal slant, since the powers of the liberal press have just been magnified. So sad, coming at a time when talk radio, the Internet and alternative networks were beginning to have a positive impact.
Nearly everyone agrees that Bush’s signing of McCain-Feingold was an act of political expediency, not an act of principle. When the result of such an action is an abridgement of our freedom of speech, there can be no political end worth that result—not even the reelection of a generally conservative president.
The Court's decision in this case will be a devastating blow to future conservative candidates running against liberal incumbents. There is no correction possible in the short term. A U.S. Supreme Court decision is final—there is no further appeal. The U.S. Congress that passed McCain-Feingold is not going to change it. And the president cannot now say that he would not have signed it if he had thought the Supreme Court would fail to strike down the obvious restrictions on free speech contained in the law. This is a case of a "flawed bill" that became flawed law when the president signed it and was upheld in certain significant aspects in a flawed majority decision that took away some of our political freedom in order to preserve the privilege of incumbents. As Justice Scalia said in his opinion, "The first instinct of power is the retention of power, and, under a Constitution that requires periodic elections, that is best achieved by the suppression of election-time speech." The president’s signature of this bill was all about the retention of power. But the price we all will pay is much too high and will continue to be paid long after this Congress and this president have left office.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Randall Nunn
