Brain Fertilizer

A very interesting revelation....

Via Mickey Kaus, (scroll down to "6:30 PM"), who offers the titular assertion in this summary:

Today's Robert Novak column, if true, offers badly-needed evidence that campaign finance reform might work: Independent campaigns (like Terry McAuliffe's DNC push attacking Bush's National Guard record) often step on the message of the candidate's official campaign. What goes for the DNC goes double for non-party "527s." Soon, big donors to 527s may conclude they've been wasting their money. Nor is a candidate like Kerry likely to feel beholden to the millionaires who finance a media campaign that gets in the way of his comeback. As long as campaigns really can't "coordinate" with independent efforts, some degree of corruption has been eliminated (while preserving the speech rights of anyone who wants to run an independent campaign).

Well, thanks to the link from the Llama Butchers saying I have additional thoughts on this post, I guess I should probably do my part and actually give an additional thought.

Personally, I think it's possible Mr. Kaus is correct. There is nearly always a difference between "policy as written" and "policy as enacted", and it is in that difference that empires rise and fall, if I may be so dramatic. It would be a shame, however, if it took 2-3 elections before this finally shook out and fell into place, and it would be a far, far better thing if we had not passed a law that so obviously honored freedom of speech only in the breach. On the other hand, if we had to have a messy election to let things shake out, at least it was one in which the Democrat candidate was so awful that the liberal media wasn't able to manipulate news enough to defeat an incumbent Republican. But can we depend on being so lucky again?