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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (9960)	12/14/1999 10:54:00 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 769670

If we could suspend the 1st Amendment only for Archer Danials Midland's lobbyists we could go a long way towards solving the eternal farm "crisis".

To: Bill who wrote (9960)	12/15/1999 7:41:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 769670

As George Will stated on Sunday, McCain is the liberal media's choice for the nomination of the conservative party and they make no bones about it. Despite the attractiveness of "campaign finance reform" to unsophisticated people, George also added that the liberal media will fail in selecting demagogue McCain as the Republican nominee. December 15, 1999 Media Self-Love-In The New Hampshire primary may be six weeks away, but tomorrow in Claremont, N.H., the media are holding their own early election. In effect they're voting for themselves by staging a huge media campaign-finance celebration for John McCain and Bill Bradley. That's the fine print you won't be hearing in what promises to be the made-for-TV event of the Presidential campaign so far. The two candidates are holding a joint appearance to plug their credentials as campaign-finance "reformers," and the media are gaga with enthusiasm. This won't be a debate, but a love-in. Ted Koppel, of "Nightline" fame, is devoting a 30-minute special in honor of the occasion. Cokie Roberts will interview the two candidates for her Sunday show. You can expect the morning and evening network news shows to have long, favorable reports. Columnists will wax lyrical. We suppose one could chalk this up to the pursuit of a story. Except that, after an initial burst of enterprise, the press corps long ago lost all interest in John Huang and the Clinton-Gore campaign sins of 1996. Senate prober Fred Thompson hasn't been able to buy a sound-bite for years. No, the real media passion seems reserved not for violations of current laws, but for the cause of writing new laws further restricting money in politics. Fish gotta swim and politicians gotta get on the evening news, so we understand what the two candidates are up to. They get to rail against "special interests," however ill-defined, and "big money," always a populist winner. The fact that they have a small obstacle called the U.S. Constitution in the way of their dreams isn't going to deter men willing to stay for months in hotels running for President. But what the two men won't tell you is that their proposals would enhance the political power of the one "special interest" cheering them on--the media. Think about how we get political information in a modern mass democracy. There are only three main sources: The candidates and their parties; the special interests with a stake in some decision by politicians or bureaucracies (labor unions, corporations, property owners, Sierra Clubbers, right-to-lifers, etc.), and the media. Muzzle the special interests and the other two sources get the public stage to themselves. The pols will face even less contradiction than they do now, which is why so many of them have taken to the "reform" cause. With their perks of office and access to television, incumbents might never lose. Their only competition would come from the media, which already hold such sway in American public life. Without money (soft or hard or whatever) to finance TV ads and direct mail, candidates who disagree with the conventional media wisdom and piety on any given issue would have no way to get their message out against their pundit overlords. When this day comes, our advice would be to cut out the political middle man and just run Ted Koppel against Tom Brokaw for President. (Sorry, we mean Peter Jennings. Mr. Koppel has always fancied himself a Secretary of State.) If voters want a real debate on campaign finance, they should skip Claremont and get a transcript of Monday's GOP Presidential debate in Des Moines. Mr. McCain tried to dodge a question on tax cuts by asking George W. Bush to commit to refusing the use of "soft money" next year if he wins the nomination. Mr. Bush, we were happy to see, refused to play this media-correct note and accurately noted that the McCain-Feingold "reform" would leave unions free to dun workers even if they object. That's a huge boon to Democrats, he said, and so he wasn't for "unilateral disarmament." Mr. McCain's reply--that Ronald Reagan managed to take the White House in 1980 without soft money--was a dodge that ignores how campaign-finance laws have been twisted in the years since, especially by the Clinton-Gore team in 1996. Mr. Reagan got elected because Holmes Tuttle and Co. could tell him not to worry about fund-raising, freeing him to go do what he did best. The $1,000 hard-money limit then was a meaningful amount, but hasn't been changed since. The subsequent soft-money distortions that Senator McCain deplores were created by campaign-finance legislation. New rules would only be twisted in the same way by some future Clinton. Orrin Hatch got in a good lick himself during the debate by asking Mr. McCain if he ever wondered why most Democrats supported his proposal but most Republicans didn't. Mr. McCain didn't answer that one. We don't mean to pick on Mr. McCain, but someone's got to point out the reason for his mutual media admiration society. The media wants to help him or Bill Bradley become President; then they will help the media become the overwhelming arbiter of what the political system spends its energies on. The only loser is democracy. interactive.wsj.com