Essay: NOW IS THE FOR ALL GOOD MEN . . .

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Any candidate can set up dozens of committees and then disclaim knowledge of what they spent on his behalf. In fact, nobody has ever been prosecuted for evading the reporting rules. How could they be? Nobody checks or audits even the acknowledged expenses. As for banned contributions, companies can easily lend favored candidates their company planes or public relations experts and give cash through individual executives. And nothing stops individuals from $5,000 gifts (pros make it $3,000 to avoid gift-tax reports) to as many committees as they please. Meanwhile, unions give via so-called independent affiliates, such as the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Committee on Political Education, which in 1966 handed Democrats some $4,000,000.

Most state laws are even sillier. Only ten states, notably Oregon, require anything resembling adequate income-outgo reports from both candidates and committees before and after primaries as well as general elections. Seven states totally ignore the subject; loopholes riddle laws in the other 33. Maryland limits spending but exempts postage, telegrams, telephoning, stationery, printing, advertising, radio and television programs, publishing, expressage, travel and board, if paid by the candidate.

What Might Be Done To reopen public office, on a legal and sensible basis, to able Americans of modest means requires far-reaching reforms—more incentives for small givers, public funds to equalize special-interest cash, and effective disclosure of just who is paying each office seeker's bills.

The first fact to be faced is that limits on campaign spending cannot be enforced in a country where candidates must go to enormous lengths to publicize themselves, particularly against incumbents. That company and union money is already flowing into U.S. politics, for example, suggests that such contributions should be legalized and honestly disclosed. Yet legislators continue the present hypocrisy out of fear that the truth would shock the voters; besides, the ins got in under the current system, and have no desire to change it in any way that might help challengers.

So far, every attempted reform has failed. In 1962, a commission appointed by President Kennedy recommended a series of modest reforms for presidential campaigns—tax relief for small donors, repeal of limitations on individual donations and interstate committee expenditures, tighter reporting and a registry of election finance to help enforce the rules. Congress ignored the whole thing. So did Lyndon Johnson, until 1966, when Louisiana Senator Russell Long somehow bulled through a new law allowing federal tax payers to check a box on their returns authorizing a $1 gift for presidential candidates—the proceeds (a possible $60 million the first year) to be split equally between the major parties, with a pro-rata share for minor parties that received more than 5,000,000 votes in the previous election (none has ever done so). Last spring the Senate repealed the Long scheme, largely because dissident Democrats feared the effects of handing $30 million to the Johnsonian National Committee.