Washington Post columnist George Will’s column today is an outstanding analysis of the inane implications of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” legislation. Mr. Will relates the absurd suppression of free speech — the suppression of a dealership’s car ads that use the dealership’s name, which happens to be the same as a Republican candidate for senator — and observes the following:

A core principle of an open society is that, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, liberties “depend on the silence of the law” — what is not forbidden is permitted. However, because of the com- plexities and vagaries of McCain-Feingold and the rest of the government’s metastasizing regulations of political activity, prudent participants in poli- tics must assume that everything is forbidden until the government gives permission.

The Supreme Court’s affirmation of McCain-Feingold was a watershed in the nation’s constitutional experience. The First Amendment will be forever open to statutory dilution, at least as it pertains to political speech. (The court has placed pornography essentially beyond the reach of regulation.) Henceforth, the guarantee of freedom of political speech is being steadily circum- scribed in the name of political hygiene. The right of free expression can be trumped by the supposed imperative of combating “corruption” or “the appearance” thereof, which is to say, where probably no actual corruption exists.
Common Cause’s desire to regulate car ads has no conceivable connection to preventing corruption. But the “corruption” rationale merely disguises the reformers’ real agenda, which is to extend government supervision of speech whenever they think extension serves their partisan advantage.

And in deriding President Bush’s late criticism yesterday of the use of section “527” organization funding for political ads, this Wall Street Journal ($) editorial reminds us that McCain-Feingold is a product of bipartisan misjudgments:

One reason 527s are so prominent now is because Mr. Bush made the mistake of signing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” that barred big donations to political parties. So 527s have become the new alternative vehicle that Americans passionate about politics are using to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. The difference is that now the campaigns can’t control how that money is spent.
If Mr. Bush wanted the two major parties to better control their campaign messages, he could have vetoed McCain-Feingold. Some of us urged him to do so, but his political advisers whispered not to worry, the Supreme Court will take care of it. Well, Sandra Day O’Connor failed too, but in any event since when are Presidents supposed to pass the buck to judges?
In our view, this was among the worst moments of Mr. Bush’s term. Having helped to midwife the current campaign-finance system, it ill behooves him to blame others for the way this world works.