Bob Bauer has some excellent thoughts on Rep. Shays newest "reform" proposal (reported in the Boston Globe), which would give candidates a veto over uncoordinated party advertising on their behalf. As Bauer makes clear, this proposal is just the latest example of how "reform" is used by incumbents to ensure that political dialogue occurs on their terms.
The Boston Globe article that prompted Bauer’s post also offers this curiously self-contradictory quote from the president of Democracy 21, Fred Wertheimer:
"There’s no accountability," [Wertheimer] said. "When you have unaccountability on this stuff, people start overreaching. And this idea of creating a Chinese wall within the party, where the people who are doing the ads are kept separate from the people who are doing the expenditures, is a fiction."
So, on one hand, you have the complaint that these speakers, being independent, lack accountability. This causes them to "overreach" (i.e., say things that people don’t like). On the other hand, you have the complaint that the independence of party independent expenditure arms "is a fiction."
Now, Wertheimer obviously has an incentive to exaggerate in order to advance the cause of "reform," but when the asserted "problem" with the system is that a group of speakers is both too independent and not independent enough . . . well, is it any wonder election lawyers are an increasingly hot commodity?
