Campaign financing

Money matters - This might suggest I'm wee bit more than a little right of center, but I agree with Karl Rove's evaluation of current campaign financing. I don't think the restrictions prevent huge donations from individuals. I feel the focus should be on transparency so that we know where all the money is coming from. Some very rich donors bankrolled a lot of Obama's campaign - nothing is wrong with that, but I do feel the public should have the right to know where all the money is coming from and the identity of donators.

[/XX comment]:

Campaign financing is not a topic I'm particularly interested in. And perhaps my position on it reflects a naivete or plumb ignorance (or that I'm less left of center than *I* would like to think), but ... I'm not sure I have a problem with either boatloads of money being spent on politics, or with inequality of resources between candidates.

I mean, I can't think of any other situations where we try to limit the money that people have to spend, if they have the money and they want to spend it. The O.J. Simpsons of the world can spend millions of dollars on getting the best lawyers, but Average Joe Criminal is stuck with the overburdened public defender. Rich people have advantages in all walks of life, not just getting into elected office. I'm not sure why all this hoopla/uproar is limited to campaigns. Especially since... a person doesn't have a constitutional right to be elected to office. You wouldn't argue that government has the obligation to help a person [financially] get elected. So I don't see why you would argue that a person shouldn't use all the resources he may get to help himself get elected.

That being said, I totally agree that the focus should be on transparency. You're never going to truly balance out resources - because there are non-monetary resources as well. And even if you set strict campaign spending caps, other interested parties will spend on behalf of the campaign, and from a practical standpoint, those expenditures are impossible to police. And I'm not sure that I value equality of resources enough to spend more resources trying to police the amount of resources spent.

I agree with XY's - and Rove's - suggestion of transparency by publishing and reporting donations. This solution (a) seems the most practical and (b) would at least partly address the problems of legitimacy and appearance of corruption that campaign finance reform is intended to cure.

Oh, and as an aside, Republicans used to like to argue that because money = speech (i.e. contributing to a campaign is political expression), the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on campaign donations. Rove mentioned this briefly in his article, with the caveat that Democrats in the Obama Age might have to concede the point to protect their bankroll. I think the whole thing is kind of bogus. Money is money. I mean, I still come out the same as Rove, but this whole money is protected by the First Amendment concept is just unconvincing...

[/XY comment]:

I see no reason that campaign contributions should be protected by the constitution, but in general I don't like government interference. I just want to add that people can spend money however they want and it's none of my business. Here I only care because who the future president is getting money from speaks to his future associations and people who will have influence. I think that's more important than his past reverend etc.