Letter to the editor
Re: Articles on Campaign Finance Laws in the Spring 2012 Issue July 5, 2012 Dear Editor: May a classmate and personal friend of Trevor Potter [’82] weigh in from the libertarian side?* The articles explore the fine points of the campaign finance laws. But the campaign finance laws are problematic precisely because they have fine points. The First Amendment is a blunt instrument. If we believe that the motives of the promoters of campaign finance reform are pure, it is fair to ask why the promoters think United States citizens have changed and are no longer able to resist blindly accepting stupid ideas which happened to be repeated over and over. If we deny that the motives of campaign finance reform are pure, and I do, it is fair to acknowledge that it was politicians who wrote these laws, and their natural inclination was surely to protect themselves from challengers. Pious pronouncements about the danger of “too much money in campaigns” are nothing but rhetorical maneuvering by the establishment to justify stopping challengers from getting traction. I view the handwringing about limiting speech to avoid the “appearance of corruption” as acquiescence to fashion. Judges should look at the real world. If and when they do, they will figure out that campaign contributions are speech, and then conclude that restrictions and limitations on contributions violate the First Amendment. Benefits of that brighter world will include, at least: 1. Citizens will be able to participate in political campaigns by giving as much as they want to their preferred candidates, and citizens will thereby be able to fully participate in the most basic function of American life—electing people to office. 2. Challengers who are able to attract contributions from any and all sources will get their message out. 3. Candidates will be released from the charade that coordinated expenditures are uncoordinated expenditures. 4. Incumbents with fancy campaign finance lawyers will stop
being able to use complicated laws to play “gotcha” against their opponents. 5. The voters will (maybe) focus a little more on the message and a little less on who is paying for the message. 6. The great American traditions of anonymous promotion of ideas and anonymous participation in politics will be given their rightful protected place in the process, and future James Madison type graduates of our law school will fearlessly promote their ideas under the name “Publius”. 7. The press will hound candidates for their funding sources anyway. 8. The fog of the “appearance of corruption” standard will lift. 9. The exception for newspapers—a la the New York Times–which exception seems to me to violate equal protection and undermine the system anyway—will blissfully go away. 10. Knucklehead rich guys will no longer have to run for office themselves in order to spend as much as they want to spread their message. 11. Lawyers will be out of work—perhaps giving them time to do something productive. Lawyers always seem to want to solve problems by enacting rules. That mindset, however, only demonstrates a foolish conceit. Ever more complicated rules do not solve problems. Ever more complicated rules bog the nation down in quicksand. I hope America’s historic run of good luck will continue, and we will reinvigorate our trust in ourselves to hear all ideas and to incrementally adopt the good and reject the bad. Sincerely, W. Bevis Schock ’82 Saint Louis, Missouri *I was the party representative in a campaign finance law challenge which went all the way up, Shrink Missouri Government v. Nixon, 528 U.S. 366 (2000). We lost.
UVA Lawyer / Fall 2012 91