politicians are politicians, i guess. they’re all just slippery bastards.
bush made a lot of political hay from this little kerry gem: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” but yesterday, he stood in front of reporters, took questions, and insisted that he was in the front ranks supporting mccain-feingold and opposing soft money.
I don’t think we ought to have 527s. I can’t be more plain about it. And I wish — I hope my opponent joins me in saying, condemning these activities of the 527s. It’s the — I think they’re bad for the system. That’s why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold. I’ve been disappointed that for the first six months of this year, 527s were just pouring tons of money, billionaires writing checks. And I spoke out against them early. I tried to get others to speak out against them, as well. And I just don’t — I think they’re bad for the system.
but that’s just not right either. so in the kerry “flip flop” tradition, let’s get bush on the record too, with a little help from dan shupp and asheesh laroia, who actually dove into a somewhat rhetorical question on the subject… and gave me some otherwise inaccessible resources to draw upon.
reading the things you’re signing
let’s review that same q&a with the press to pick up another bush statement to help build this story. sure, we all know that bush signed mccain-feingold, but maybe he didn’t read it.
And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but used for other purposes, as well. I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to, once and for all, get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising. And so I’m disappointed with all those kinds of ads.
i realize it’s asking a lot of the president to read the bills he signs, but we can do some reading of our own if we are so inclined. the commonly-known mccain-feingold bill is technically known as the bipartisan campaign reform act of 2002 [pdf] and was signed by president bush on march 27, 2002. it’s only 36 pages. the tricky part about reading legislation is that you often have to do some cut-and-paste for all the “inserts and deletes” in the text of the legislation. so you can go with the original text, or you can drop by the federal election commission pages for official positions on the subject. if you really want to do some reading, there’s plenty there for you. a shorter version might be found in the wikipedia.
but back to the question of “getting rid of that” with the president’s signature on mccain-feingold.
The McCain-Feingold bill dealt only with political party soft money and phony issue ads run within 60 days of the general election, not with the so-called 527 groups. The President knew that. In fact, in his signing statement in March of 2002, the President even objected to the fact that our bill prohibited individuals as well as corporations and unions from contributing soft money to the political parties. The 527 issue has nothing to do with the McCain-Feingold bill; it is caused by the failure of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law that has been in effect since 1974.
the president objected? no way! can’t be! he told us he was a supporter!
However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.
I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.
I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.
it depends on what the definition of early is
so, step with me into the time machine. set the dial for january, 2001, and we have a new president george w. bush taking a position on the mccain-feingold legislation, just ten days after his three-day, $40 million innaugural celebration.
For McCain, Now’s the Time. But Bush? [new york times, january 28, 2001]
The new president has said he favors some revamping of the federal campaign finance laws, but not the unilateral soft-money ban that is the keystone of the McCain-Feingold bill (Mr. McCain’s chief ally is Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin). Mr. Bush has
proposed banning soft-money checks from corporations and labor unions, which helped stuff the coffers of Democratic Party committees with $243 million in the last election, but not from individual donors. He also wants more stringent limits on how unions can use the dues of members for political activities, a provision Democrats say would kill McCain-Feingold, which has bipartisan support from 60 senators, including all 50 Democrats, according to Mr. Feingold.
emphasis in this quote is mine, because i want you to realize that on august 23, 2004, president bush now claims he “spoke out against” “billionaires writing checks” early. not as early as 2001, it seems.
just to get a concept of what “early” means in terms of mccain-feingold, it was first introduced in 1997. so in the timeline of debate on the bill, the first four years (1997-2001) must be considered “pre-early” so the last part of 2001 might be “early” and then the first couple months of 2002 would be “late.” with that timeline, bush counts as an “early” supporter before signing the bill in march 2002.
so that’s a very long-winded way to throw out the 10-word political answer that isn’t getting covered in all the swift vets noise:
president bush actually did oppose mccain-feingold before he signed it.
