A New Day Dawning

For years, John McCain had imagined how the Last Battle would be fought, how he would be tested if campaign-finance reform actually came to a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Ever the rebel among his risk-averse peers, McCain would have to do some things he had never been much good at, cut some corners, play the inside game, be a dealmaker--be more like them in hopes of making them more like him. And then, once he had bullied and cajoled and converted his colleagues, he would have to do something even harder. He would have to trust them. And that's what finally happened last Wednesday afternoon, when a big, messy coalition of reformers from both parties gathered in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Room to decide whether to hold hands and jump off the cliff together. As McCain entered the summit early Wednesday afternoon, the size of his gamble scared him, and he wondered if he'd misplaced his faith. "When I walked in that room and sat down, I didn't think our chances were very good," he says.

By the end of the day, however, the chances looked considerably better; the two sides agreed to increase the amount of hard money individuals could give candidates and parties, and that compromise paved the way for the historic vote to ban the unlimited soft-money donations that parties could collect from corporations, unions and the wealthy. By the end of the week the Arizona Senator, his sidekick, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and their merry band of china breakers actually had victory in sight--a victory that could lead to the most dramatic campaign-finance overhaul since the post-Watergate reforms of 1974. McCain-Feingold's reforms are so sweeping, in fact, that no one can be sure of what will happen after this week. The House will get its turn, and there are lots of anxious lawmakers on both sides who have reason to kill the bill before it kills them. Then President George W. Bush has to sign it. (He has hinted he will.) Finally, the courts will have to rule on the legal challenges that reform opponents are already drafting, particularly to a provision that would limit political advertising by independent groups like the N.R.A. and the Sierra Club in the last weeks before an election.

But the big question is this: If the bill becomes law, will it truly disinfect our politics? The end of Clinton's presidency and the launch of Bush's were a parable for reformers, between the pardons for Democratic fat cats and the environmental policy clout of Big Business. But like a virus, political money has a way of mutating so it spreads in any environment. Be careful what you wish for. The cure may be worse than the disease. "This is a stunningly stupid thing to do, my colleagues," Kentucky's Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor, "and don't think there's anyone out there to save us from this."