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• Monday, February 5, 2007 06:00 AM

  Why not try what's already working?

  SR and Jalmari are right. Too-long campaigns devour massive amounts of cash, which is spent primarily on television advertising.

  But at bottom this idea falters on the "establish tighter rules" fallacy. We've been adding and tightening campaign finance rules for 30 years and each "improvement" just makes things worse.

  Meanwhile, two states (Vermont and Arizona, I think) have already established "Clean Campaign" laws based on an idea Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower have been touting for more than a decade.

  Oversimplified, it offers public financing to both incumbents and challengers. You can turn it down and raise money privately, but if you do, your opponent gets the same amount in public money that you raise in private (incumbents get 80% of what challengers raise, to compensate for the incumbency factor.)

  It levels the playing field and vastly reduces the incentive to raise oceans of cash privately (why spend time and money raising money if you opponent gets the same amount with no effort at all?)

  And it works! It's been proven in at least two campaign cycles. Only with state candidates so far, but if it works for them, why not nationally?

  A shortened campaign season and making political advertising subject to a new Fairness Doctrine would vastly increase the effectiveness of Clean Campaign rules.

  The bribers, bribe-takers, rule-breakers and other criminals will always be with us. That is no reason not to try a system that at least limits their ability to operate.

  Giving up on campaign finance reform is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

  —Yellow Dog Read Yellow Dog's other letters
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