# Comprehesive Campaign Reform - in 3 words **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 28, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249 "2007-08-28T18:31:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/21 "2007-08-29T16:30:19Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] :dubious: Really? Other things being equal, who has an easier time soliciting campaign contributions – the incumbent or the challenger? [/QUOTE] The incumbent–especially because the fund-raising restrictions that we already have in place make it more difficult for challengers. But the point is, the challenger doesn’t have to spend _more_ than the incumbent, but he or she has to spend _something_ to make his or her name recognizable. (a) If both candidates spend nothing on TV ads, the incumbent wins-\*. (b) If the incumbent spends $20 million and the challenger $5 million, the challenger has a _chance_, because the challenger can build name recognition. (c) In a perfect world, both candidates would spend $20 million and level the playing field. That seldom happens except when challengers self-finance. In the real world, most of the time, we’re operating in Scenario B. The OP proposes that we move to Scenario A. My point is, that will result in _even more_ incumbent victories. \*- You may say, then why didn’t every incumbent win before television was invented? The answer is, because it was a different world–there were other ways for candidates to build name recognition. More people read newspapers, and newspapers were allowed and even expected to be openly and rabidly partisan and to advocate for favored candidates. The population was smaller, and challengers could meet more people on a personal basis. Political machines had people that walked precincts and spread the word. In today’s world, these mechanisms no longer exist; it’s advertise or be ignored. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/22 "2007-08-29T16:33:26Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] The three key words in election reform: Money isn’t speech. [/QUOTE] Amen! ---
**Author:** ![netsplit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@netsplit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/netsplit)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/23 "2007-08-29T16:48:32Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig] In today’s world, these mechanisms no longer exist; it’s advertise or be ignored. [/QUOTE] Wouldn’t they come back though? Seems like a false dilemma. If the only way you’ll get your guy elected is by pounding the pavement guess what people are going to do! Not only that but it c ould spark Real Social Interaction™\*. Imagen basing your vote on things other then 30 second sound bites. \*not only does it spark politicle discourse but it cuts through shoes and makes julian fries! available for three easy payments of… ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/24 "2007-08-29T16:49:29Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] [A persuasive argument that banning the purchase of political ad time would not be unconstitutional.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6994089&highlight=lind+campaign#post6994089) [/QUOTE] Since you didn’t actually point out what we’re supposed to be looking at in that thread, I may have missed the point you are trying to make, but from what I can tell, there’s nothing persuasive in there at all. In fact, I don’t even think that thread is even really talking about the same subject. Some guy simply says that “because limits on campaign finance do not address the content of speech – only its volume, as it were” that putting limits on **contributions** is okay. There’s no substantive discussion that I can find that says that banning privately funded advertisements wouldn’t violate the First Amendment. Please explain why a TV ad that says “Vote for John Kerry” shouldn’t constitute speech protected by the First Amendment. ---
**Author:** ![netsplit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@netsplit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/netsplit)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/25 "2007-08-29T16:56:43Z")
I was under the impression there was a supreme court ruling that since broadcast tv wasn’t covered under the first amendment because it’s a shared resource. At any rate as long they gave each candidate an equal amount of air time couldn’t the “time and place” ruling be used? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/26 "2007-08-29T17:01:29Z")
[QUOTE=Ravenman] Since you didn’t actually point out what we’re supposed to be looking at in that thread . . . [/QUOTE] I linked to a particular **post.** Never mind, here’s what I was quoting – from _The Next American Nation,_ by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 256-259 (from before the McCain-Feingold Bill, but I don’t think the picture has changed all that much since it passed): > [@](#): > > Campaign financing is by far the most important mechanism for overclass influence in government. The real two-party system in the United States consists of the party of voters and the tiny but influential party of donors. The donor party in the United States is made up of an extraordinarily small number of citizens. In 1988, according to one study, only 10.2 percent of the American public made a contribution to a candidate, party, or partisan group. . . . The group of large political donors is a still more exclusive club. According to a study by Citizen Action, in the 1989-90 election cycle only 179,677 individual donors gave contributions greater than $200 to a federal candidate, political action committee (PAC), or party: “Thirty-four percent of the money spent by federal candidates was directly contributed by no more than one-tenth of one percent of the voting age population.” One may reasonably doubt that this one tenth of one percent is representative of the electorate or the population at large. > > \ > > Special interests buy favors from congressmen and presidents through political action committees (PACs), devices by which groups like corporations, professional associations, trade unions, investment banking groups – can pool their money and give $10,000 per election to each House and Senate candidate. Today there are more than 4,000 Political Action Committees (PACs) of various kinds registered with the Federal Election Commission; in 1974, when they were sanctioned by law, there were only 500. PAC money is driving campaign costs to new heights. In 1992, the average Senate incumbent spent more than $3.6 million for re-election; that is the equivalent of raising $12,000 a week in a single six-year term. Members of Congress, by comparison, spend only an average of $557,403 to be re-elected – a “mere” $5,000 a week for a two-year term. The average cost of a House campaign has risen to this level from $140,000 in 1980 – and $52,000 in 1974. > > The chief beneficiaries of rising campaign costs and PAC contributions have been incumbents. In 1972, 52 cents of the average PAC dollar went to incumbents, compared to 25 cents to challengers (the rest went to candidates for open seats); in the 1988 House elections, incumbents received 84.4 cents of each PAC dollar and challengers only 8.6 cents. It makes more sense for lobbies to buy access to established members of Congress and senators – particularly those with important leadership positions – than to fund challengers, who, if elected, would have no seniority and little influence. . . . **Former Senator Barry Goldwater has lamented, “The Founding Fathers would frown in their graves if they saw us rationing candidacies sheerly on the basis of money: who has – or can raise – the millions necessary to run for office.”** > > Democrats, when they were members of the majority party, received more PAC money than Republicans, though both parties are saturated with it. Contrary to conservative claims that liberal lobby groups dominate Congress, PAC funds come overwhelmingly from business: in 1990, 65 percent of PAC contributions came from business PACs, compared to 24 percent from labor and only 11 percent from ideological groups (including conservative as well as liberal pressure groups). “At one point,” John Judis has pointed out, “the American Petroleum Institute employed more lobbyists in Washington than the entire labor movement.” > > One of the effects of the postpartisan PAC system is to weaken the link between members of Congress and senators and the districts and states they are supposed to represent. Out-of-state money from special interests often flowes into House and Senate elections. This means that many senators are, in effect, at-large representatives of free-spending national business constituencies. > > Some argue that special-interest expenditures have no significant influence on public policy. **If all of this money is not buying special favors from congressmen and senators, a great many groups and individuals who are otherwise careful with their resources are acting in a highly irrational manner, year after year.** They don’t come much more libertarian than Goldwater, and even he was appalled at this state of affairs. From the same book, pp. 311-313: > [@](#): > > Today’s U.S. government is democratic in form but plutocratic in substance. . . . In a misguided 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court held that Congress could not limit spending by rich Americans promoting their own candidacies. This decision was to the equalization of voting power what Dred Scott was to abolitionism. In The Yale Law Review, Jamin Raskin and John Boniface have argued that political candidates in the United States must win a “wealth primary.” Candidates without enormous amounts of money, either from their own fortunes or from rich individuals and special interest groups, cannot hope to win the party primaries – much less general elections. Indeed, the Buckley decision is one reason why more than half the members of the Senate today are millionaires. . . . > > It is time to build a wall of separation between check and state. Curing the disease of plutocratic politics requires a correct diagnosis of its cause: the costs of political advertising. **The basic problem is that special interests buy access and favors by donating the money needed for expensive political advertising in the media. Elaborate schemes governing the flow of money do nothing to address the central problem: paid political advertising. Instead of devising unworkable limits on campaign financing that leave the basic system intact, we should cut the Gordian knot of campaign corruption by simply outlawing paid political advertising on behalf of any candidate for public office. The replacement of political advertising by free informational public service notices in the electronic and print media would level the playing field of politics and kill off an entire parasitic industry of media consultants and spin doctors.** > > An outright ban on paid political advertising and the imposition of free time requirements on the media are radical measures, but nothing less is necessary if we are to prevent our government from continuing to be sold to the highest bidders. **The argument against strict public regulation of money in politics is based on a false analogy between free spending and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The analogy is false, because limits on campaign finance do not address the content of speech – only its volume, as it were.** It is not an infringement on free speech to say that, in a large public auditorium, Douglas will not be allowed to use a microphone unless Lincoln can as well.\* > > \*A much more compelling analogy would be between the electoral process and the judicial system, with the electorate playing the role of the jury. In our system of trial by jury, there are elaborate rules governing the presentation of evidence to the jury by plaintiff and defendant (the “candidates”). If our judicial system were organized the way our judicial system is, then rich candidates would be allowed to buy time before the jury. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, in one Senate election, outspent his opponent by 300 to 1; the equivalent, in the judicial system, would be allowing a rich defendant to buy, say, six months to present his side of the case, while the poor plaintiff might be able to purchase only twenty minutes for his side. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/27 "2007-08-29T17:05:03Z")
[QUOTE=Ravenman] Please explain why a TV ad that says “Vote for John Kerry” shouldn’t constitute speech protected by the First Amendment. [/QUOTE] The Framers were not contemplating political “free speech” that had to be **paid** for. No such thing existed at the time. Even commercial advertising barely existed. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/28 "2007-08-29T17:34:30Z")
Who paid for the distribution and production of political tracts? The Free Speech Fairy? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/29 "2007-08-29T17:39:20Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] The Framers were not contemplating political “free speech” that had to be **paid** for. No such thing existed at the time. Even commercial advertising barely existed. [/QUOTE] First, on your prior post, I’m still not seeing anything that says that banning political TV ads would survive the laugh test with respect to the First Amendment. I’ll repeat: the thrust of the quoted sections is about contributions, not advertisements. Goldwater didn’t say political ads should be banned, he was talking about the negative side of forcing candidates to raise money to be competitive. Those are two different issues. Second, the implication that the Founding Fathers would disapprove of TV ads is speculation entirely without basis. I think they’d see TV ads as the modern equivalent of the public square. You can certainly point out differences between TV and the public square, but neither one of us can reliably state what the FF might think on this issue. What’s more, what they might think about TV ads doesn’t matter one whit. They wrote the First Amendment which prohibits Congress from abridging free speech. I simply fail to see how “Vote for John Kerry” isn’t an exercise of protected free speech. Just because there’s a price tag associated doesn’t make it not free speech, especially when the speech is on a compelling topic of public interest. The idea that paying for speech makes it not speech is absurd – does that mean that the editors of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times may be subject to government censorship because it costs them money to print the editorial page? ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/30 "2007-08-29T19:07:37Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] In France, no candidate is allowed to **buy** TV time; each candidate in a given race gets an equal amount of **free** airtime to present his/her views. We could learn something from that. [/QUOTE] But France has only presidential elections, plus parliamentary elections in which national parties play a more important role than local candidates. American electoral culture is different. We have general elections and primaries, fought by district and state, in which candidates demand the right to be heard as individuals. American networks would go broke if they had to provide time to every presidential, House, Senate, gubernatorial, and legislative candidate! > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Wouldn’t they come back though? Seems like a false dilemma. If the only way you’ll get your guy elected is by pounding the pavement guess what people are going to do! You’d be bucking some deep social trends to make it work. People live in smaller households, in spread-out suburbs, in which women work and there is seldom anybody at home. Courts frown on forcing state and city employees to walk precincts (and rightly so!). People aren’t going to go back to reading daily local newspapers, and in an era of electronic entertainment they aren’t going to go back to thinking of meeting in town at a barbecue and listening to political oratory all afternoon (as people did in the 1890’s) as a fun weekend. It’s depressing to think that TV ads are necessary to build a credible case against an incumbent. I wish that it weren’t so. Perhaps one day it won’t be so. But for the time being it **is** so, and I can’t endorse any “reform” that takes that opportunity away and makes it even easier for incumbents to win. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/31 "2007-08-29T19:43:00Z")
Nothing will change until we change politicians. And I am guessing that even on this thread, not a single poster would make campaign reform a make or break for a candidate otherwise in agreement with their positions. It just seems so reasonable to overlook that if your candidate candidate is right on everything else. Few current politicians are not beneficiaries of the current financing mechanisms, and it’s unlikely they will hurt themselves by generating real reform (as opposed to giving it lip service). Campaign financing reform is a fun, but totally academic debate. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/32 "2007-08-29T22:24:23Z")
There should only be one campaign finance ‘reform’: Disclosure. Make sure every nickel of every contribution can be traced through public records. That’s it. Let people spend what they want, where they want. One person’s ‘lobbyist’ is another person’s fighter for the little guy. And money IS speech if it takes money to be heard. Chile managed to block opposition speech quite effectively by taxing newsprint by an exhorbitant amount. People who advocate for these types of reform are usually A) incumbents, who always benefit from restrictions on money raising, and B) people who think that the campaign restrictions will disproportionately hurt ‘the other side’. With the rise of the internet and the vast dollars the grassroots can raise, there’s even less of a reason to have finance restrictions than there was 10 years ago. CFR should be scrapped as a violation of the first amendment and as counterproductive to the functioning of a democracy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/33 "2007-08-29T22:41:07Z")
[QUOTE=villa] Who paid for the distribution and production of political tracts? The Free Speech Fairy? [/QUOTE] I’m not sure, but I believe pamphlets like Paine’s _Common Sense_ were sold cheap in the streets, like newspapers. Political columns like _The Federalist_ were printed in newspapers without any money changing hands, like letters to the editor now. And, again, I’m not sure, but I don’t think newspapers started selling non-classified advertising space until decades later. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/34 "2007-08-29T23:21:09Z")
Personally, I think eliminating campaign commercials would be a bad thing. I don’t _believe_ what I hear, but I used it as a starting point to judge what ideological ground each candidate is staking out. If a candidate says “I believe in issue X,” I’ll want to know what their voting record is on it, but if issue X is important to me, that gives me a baseline reading on the candidate. Without that information, given how spotty and biased coverage is in the media (especially coverage of local issues and candidates), I wouldn’t get to hear much of the candidates’ points of view. [QUOTE=villa] Who paid for the distribution and production of political tracts? The Free Speech Fairy? [/QUOTE] The newspapers, which were HEAVILY involved in the political process, and often extremely biased. [QUOTE=netsplit] At any rate as long they gave each candidate an equal amount of air time couldn’t the “time and place” ruling be used? [/QUOTE] Sure, but define “candidate.” I see two possibilities here: 1. Anyone who wants to be a candidate is, and qualifies for free air time: The airwaves would be filled with idiots trying to get free publicity and the serious candidates couldn’t cut through the static. 2. You must be supported by a major party to be considered a candidate: This would just strengthen the big parties and kill off independents. 3. You must provide evidence of support through petitions from all 50 states (similar to today’s system): Only people with enough money to create PR and fight their way up through the system would ever qualify as candidates, unless they were supported by one of the big parties (we’re back to money again). ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/35 "2007-08-29T23:51:30Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] And, again, I’m not sure, but I don’t think newspapers started selling non-classified advertising space until decades later. [/QUOTE] Newspapers back then were mostly ads. Here’s a page from the Massachusetts Centinal, a Federalist paper from 1790. As you can see, all ads: [http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/past/past3.html](http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/past/past3.html) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2007, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/36 "2007-08-30T00:04:26Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] Newspapers back then were mostly ads. Here’s a page from the Massachusetts Centinal, a Federalist paper from 1790. As you can see, all ads: [http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/past/past3.html](http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/past/past3.html) [/QUOTE] But those are all what we would now call “classified” as opposed to “display” ads, and none of them are political. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/37 "2007-08-30T00:59:08Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] But those are all what we would now call “classified” as opposed to “display” ads, and none of them are political. [/QUOTE] I don’t know…the three boats for sale all have a picture of a boat next to them, so that’s sort of a display ad. 🙂 But the lack of display advertising is more of a technological thing than anything else. Newspapers back then didn’t tend to have a wide variety of fonts, it was difficult, expensive, and time consuming to put in pictures, and the presses of the time made non-standardized column spacing difficult. And the ads aren’t political because the paper is political…it’s a Federalist newspaper. You don’t have to run ads for your cause in the paper when you own the paper; your views get printed for free. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2007, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/38 "2007-08-30T01:43:58Z")
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat] Personally, I think eliminating campaign commercials would be a bad thing. I don’t _believe_ what I hear, but I used it as a starting point to judge what ideological ground each candidate is staking out. If a candidate says “I believe in issue X,” I’ll want to know what their voting record is on it, but if issue X is important to me, that gives me a baseline reading on the candidate. Without that information, given how spotty and biased coverage is in the media (especially coverage of local issues and candidates), I wouldn’t get to hear much of the candidates’ points of view. [/QUOTE] But if you lived in France (see post #18), you would learn as much as you wanted, and more, about every candidate’s stated views. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2007, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/39 "2007-08-30T03:07:48Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] But if you lived in France (see post #18), you would learn as much as you wanted, and more, about every candidate’s stated views. [/QUOTE] And if we lived in France, we’d all be smoking Gaulloise and enjoying universal health care. On the other hand, if we were all Jewish, none of us would be eating shellfish. None of that has anything to do with the Bill of Rights. Stop dancing around the point and explain why you think the First Amendment doesn’t protect political speech. Is it really only because you think political campaigns didn’t spend money in the 18th century, and you’re concerned about whether or not political ads in bygone years had fancy graphics? Even still, what does that have to do with the Constitutional guarantee of free speech? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2007, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249/40 "2007-08-30T09:13:35Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] The Framers were not contemplating political “free speech” that had to be **paid** for. No such thing existed at the time. Even commercial advertising barely existed. [/QUOTE] Better hope Congress doesn’t agree with you, what with your paying to post here and all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comprehesive-campaign-reform-in-3-words/417249.md?page=3)