Though He’s not a Straussian . . . At Least I Don’t Think He Is
Bob Bauer gets prominent real estate in today’s Washington Post, in the form of a substantial block quote in George Will’s Post column:
The logic of [McCain’s] doctrine would cause him to put the power of the presidency behind efforts to clamp government controls on Internet advocacy. This is because the speech regulators’ impulse is increasingly untethered from concern with corruption. It is extending to regulation in the name of “fairness.” Bob Bauer, a Democratic lawyer, says this about the metastasizing government regulation of campaigns:
“More and more, it is meant to regulate any money with the potential of influencing elections; and so any unregulated but influential money, in whichever way its influence is felt or achieved, is unfair . This explains the hand-wringing horror with which the reform community approached the Internet’s fast-growing use and limitless potential.”
This is why the banner of “campaign reform” is no longer waved only by insurgents from outside the political establishment.
Can we just stipulate that, if you’re interested in running for President, you probably should reduce the occasions in which you appear on popular national radio programs and dis the First Amendment.