Hearings Underline Need for Full Campaign Reform

If the first week of Senate hearings into campaign fund-raising excesses failed to produce a smoking gun, at least it generated plenty of heat. But the most important message may lie behind the headline-grabbing revelations of wire transfers of foreign money and sinister Chinese plots to buy influence.

The less-dramatic testimony is documenting the heart of the matter: the hunger for campaign money is insatiable; the means of raising money constantly skirts the intent of the law and, at times, the letter of the law, and most members of Congress want to do little if anything about it.

Chairman Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) launched the hearings with something of a bombshell: his allegation that Beijing was trying to buy influence in Washington through the American elections. But then he deflated his own balloon by saying he couldn’t make his evidence public because it was secret information.

Next, Republican senators sought to win partisan points by grilling the leadoff witness, Richard Sullivan, the former Democratic National Committee finance chief. Sullivan insisted that he did not believe his aides had violated the law or knowingly solicited or received money from foreign sources. More to the point, Sullivan said it was impossible to trace the ultimate source of campaign money that may have been wired to this country from abroad. That, he said, illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between foreign contributions, which are illegal, and donations by American subsidiaries of foreign-owned firms, which are not.

A telling moment came when Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said it was “surreal” to hear his fellow senators of both parties expressing shock to learn of the relentless pressure to raise mountains of dollars under the present system. In fact, as he noted, the senators live under--and by--the very same pressures every day of their elective lives.

And they know how these increasingly appalling abuses can be fixed, as well. The best outcome of the current hearings would be to give lawmakers the political fortitude to change the campaign financing system that put them where they sit today.