What's so bad about untraceable political donations?

Much is being made of the news, reported by the Washington Post and Fox, among others, that the Obama campaign is taking in a large haul of cash from small donors who are using anonymous pre-paid credit cards to support their chosen candidate's efforts to take up residence in the White House. The campaign took in $100 million in September alone. The Obama camp is fueling the chatter with its nudge-and-wink attitude toward the whole affair:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

There's no doubt that the pre-paid cards and lack of security enable contributions beyong legal limits and by people forbidden by law to support campaigns, but much of the reportage simply assumes that's cause enough to be concerned. Kudos to Fox News, then, for asking Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission Associate General Counsel, if it really matters if a candidate takes in untraceable donations, especially since such anonymity inherently ensures that the candidate won't feel any sense of obligation to the unknown donors.

Gross's response, is that "the harm is that illegal money is coming into the campaign coffers. It's not permitted." That's circular reasoning that doesn't explain why the donations should be illegal to begin with.

American political "reformers" have been obsessed for years with the idea that the expenditure of money to support candidates or promote causes is a harmful -- even, they seem to suggest, sinful -- activity that taints a fragile process and leads politicians to wander from the path of righteousness. It's a crusading mindset that has led to the imposition of complex and intrusive rules that make it legally perilous for grassroots groups to pool funds to buy lawn signs or newspaper ads.

Bradley A. Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, warned in a July 2007 article for City Journal, "Campaign finance reform is creating an intrusive regulatory regime that’s steadily eroding Americans’ political freedoms. Making matters worse, it does little or nothing to combat corruption."

The fundamental assumption about the supposedly corrupting influence of money has always been that moneyed interests will buy influence. How can hundreds of thousands of anonymous donors with presumably diverse opinions bribe a candidate to do anything?

That's not to say that Barack Obama is completely blameless. If nothing else, the senator from Illinois has long been a proponent of arcane restrictions on campaign finance, so his sudden discovery of the advantages of extra-legal donations is a bit ... convenient.

But, at the end of the day, it's hard to see any actual harm being done when political activists bypass restrictive laws to donate to the candidates of their choice.

Contact J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com