As a historian, I tend to fend off questions about the future. “I only know what happened,” I tell students. Over the years I have steadfastly stuck by this rule — with one exception — but that prediction seems right on target. Come Sept. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear another case involving campaign finance regulation, and if I am correct, one or more sections of McCain-Feingold, more formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), will be declared unconstitutional.
Congress first began wrestling with the problem of campaign finance a century ago. Over the years, efforts at reform followed a familiar pattern: Scandal ratcheted up public outrage, and then Congress would enact a “reform.” Most recently, Bill Clinton’s inviting big donors to overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom and the mushrooming of so-called soft money in the 1990s resulted in BCRA.
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