On Shays-Meehan, The National Review’s Rich Lowry drops the policy gauntlet at Dubya’s (shuffling) feet:

If Bush signs something close to the current version of Shays-Meehan he will be committing his first bona fide, no-doubt-about-it, can’t-be-spun flip-flop and broken campaign promise.

Asked point-blank on ABC News’s This Week on January 23, 2000 whether he would veto McCain-Feingold or Shays-Meehan Bush said he would.

[…] The problem with the kind of surrender that Bush appears to be about to make on campaign finance is that it does double damage: It means signing off on lousy legislation, but it also means going back on his word.

This is exactly the double whammy that Bush Sr. experienced when he capitulated on taxes. It wasn’t just the effect of the policy that hurt Bush, but the damage it did to his political character in the mind of the public.

Meanwhile, The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes takes a rosier look:

National politics will survive the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill, which passed the House last week and is likely to become law soon. If it curbs money in politics at all, the effect will probably be slight. And Republicans shouldn’t be alarmed despite House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s claim that Shays-Meehan could produce Armageddon for them. In truth, there’s a better chance the measure will aid Republicans in winning the White House, Senate, and House than impede them.

[…] Why would Democrats support a measure that may hurt them politically and Republicans oppose a bill that may help? Ideology and the press play a role here. Democrats–the liberals anyway–believe a Washington free of the influence of corporations would be fertile ground for liberal governance. They think, John Podhoretz wrote in the New York Post, ‘the reason their wonderful ideas for controlling and managing America do not become law is solely due to rich people and corporations . . . get the money out and wonderful new regulations will flow.’ When the New York Times and Washington Post editoralize along these lines, they salute.

Republicans don’t. Their animus against campaign finance reform stems from their view of government. Whatever can be done free of government control–elections, say–should be left in the hands of civil society or the private sector. What the media thinks leaves them cold. Shays-Meehan won’t vindicate either. It won’t change the campaign equation that much, but whatever impact it has should leave Republicans pleasantly surprised.

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