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"Money, Politics, and Equality." A curious triumvirate. The first two elements-money and politics-have gone hand in hand, probably for as long as the two have coexisted. A century ago, Ohio political boss Mark Hanna declared: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money . . . and I can't remember what the second one is." We can be fairly certain that he did not have equality in mind.
Yet politics and equality pair naturally, too. Political equality has a distinguished history in our democracy. Our country was founded on the principle that "all men are created equal." Ours was the first nation to breathe life into the notion of a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." The guarantee of equal protection, revolutionary as it was when it was first grafted onto the Constitution, is now a bulwark of our democracy, as is the principle, adopted by the Supreme Court almost a century later, of "one person, one vote."
It is only when we endeavor to complete the triangle-when we strive to reconcile the role of money in politics with our commitment to political equality-that we face an apparently insoluble puzzle. On the one hand, the tradition of political equality on which this nation was built would seem to fit comfortably with rules directed at ensuring that individuals or groups could not, just by virtue of their wealth, exert vastly disproportionate influence on elections or on elected officials. On the other hand, we have an equally venerable tradition insisting that individuals within our capitalist society generally may use their wealth as they please. So long as our elected officials are in a position to influence the allocation of wealth, individuals will always have an incentive to use their economic advantage to influence elections and elected officials.
Reformers long have advocated various means to take money out of the process of choosing candidates for political office. Indeed, political equality is the premise underlying many campaign finance regulations and proposed reforms. How else to explain proposals to cap the spending of the Ross Perots, Michael Huffingtons, and Steve Forbeses of the worldfigures with no political base and less political experience, who become formidable political candidates only by dint...