Root of Campaign Abuse

Back in mid-1997, campaign fund-raising was the Washington scandal. There were serious unanswered questions about the legality of the aggressive fund-raising tactics of the Clinton-Gore team and the Democratic National Committee, including Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers for fat-cat contributors. That would have been the appropriate moment for Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate White House fund-raising abuses.

Today, it’s a somewhat different story. Reno was not out of order in saying Monday that there was no basis for a successful criminal prosecution of President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore in the campaign finance matter and that she would not ask for appointment of an outside investigator. The Clinton-Gore fund-raising juggernaut has now been examined inside-out by Senate and House committees, the Justice Department and FBI and the Federal Election Commission. Along the way, a Justice Department task force obtained 14 guilty pleas or indictments of campaign fund-raisers and contributors, but none within the White House.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee considered adding campaign fund-raising abuse to its list of possible impeachment charges but quickly concluded there was nothing impeachable there. Federal Election Commission auditors have recommended fines for both the Clinton and Dole presidential campaigns, but it’s not clear that any fines actually will be levied.

The heart of the matter all along has been the campaign finance law itself. The post-Watergate act is ambiguous and riddled with loopholes that have been exploited and expanded time and again by both parties.

The issue before Reno this week was the use of so-called “soft money” to finance issue ads on television that touted Clinton’s record in office and attacked the positions of Bob Dole, who eventually would be the Republican nominee for president. Contributors can donate unlimited amounts of money to party committees to finance such ads so long as they do not specifically advocate voting for a candidate or against the opponent. Otherwise, individual donations, “hard money,” are limited to $1,000.

While many of Clinton’s most outspoken congressional critics castigated Reno for not turning the matter over to a special prosecutor, they took advantage of this very same loophole for their own elections. And many of them also voted against campaign reform legislation that would have banned the raising of soft money.

There’s no question that the Clinton-Gore campaign pushed its fund-raising operation to the limit of the law and beyond the bounds of propriety. That cannot be changed now. What can be changed is a campaign finance system that allows, or even invites, this sort of abuse. That should be a priority of the new Congress in January.