McCain-Feingold: Five Years of Failure

Five years ago today President Bush made one of the more significant mistakes of his presidency when he signed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law. Mark Tapscott tells us how successful it's been:

Five years ago today President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the main sponsors of which were Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI. Bush signed the bill despite having publicly expressed doubt that it was constitutional.

The law banned certain forms of political speech about incumbent congressmen for 30 days prior to a primary election and 60 days prior to a general election. Not since President Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and jailed prominent Copperhead newspaper editors during the Civil War has such a frontal assault been mounted against the First Amendment's guarantee of every American's right to express political opinion without official restraint. ...

And five years later, none of the promises of the McCain-Feingold advocates has been fulfilled. The "corrupting influence of money in politics" is as strong as ever and there is no evidence that the law has had one iota of influence on the degree of citizen participation in politics.

If anything, earmarks financed with tax dollars - the real corrupting influence of money in politics - is at an all-time high. Several congressmen have been convicted of crimes related to earmarks and the Republicans lost their congressional majority last November largely because they couldn't resist this genuine form of the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Some think that Bush signed the bill expecting that the Supreme Court would do his job for him and toss out the law as being unconstitutional. Unfortunately, you can't ever plan on the court doing what makes sense, and when the court decided to allow major portions of the bill to stand, the voters were permanently screwed.

Having his name on this disastrous bill has probably done more damage to McCain's presidential hopes than anything else he's done, and it's a legacy that will forever taint McCain's reputation.