Political organization is good. Going back to the fight against PACs, reformers have often seemed confused over whether they were fighting money or organized money. Even now, partly for legal reasons, the focus is on incorporated groups, such as 527 committees, while disorganized individuals are constitutionally free to do the same things, without limits. From fighting organized money, it is a short step to fighting political organization itself. Underlying the reform movement seems to be a vision of unmediated political communication that writes organization out. Yet political organizations–parties, interest and affinity groups, community organizations, non-profits, even blogs and other media–can help people find and sort through their shifting and conflicting policy preferences, and, by organizing, can help give power to people who are not economically powerful on their own. Political organization is an alternative to money. Unmediated politics– TV-ad politics–is one in which money matters much more, not less. The campaign reform movement should first stop fighting organization itself. During the battle over regulation of 527 committees last year, a number of reformers noticed that non-profits could serve a similar purpose as a channel for big money, and that regulations might have to be considered–to which the answer, as with blogs, is not to exempt nonprofits, but to consider how you got on a path that made such a regulation plausible and turn back. Reform should, instead, strengthen those forms of political organization that help give people power in the system, as citizens, voters, and even contributors. Indeed, some systems of reform could strengthen political parties and other organizations, making them more than just banks for large contributions. Small-donor PACs, for example–an idea that was briefly floated in California a decade ago–is one such innovation, as are matching-fund systems.

Don’t overtax the "corruption" rationale. The smartest recent insight into campaign reform has come from Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit. Reform efforts, Calabresi said, in a concurring opinion on a decision regarding Vermont’s mandatory spending limits, were "constrained" by trying to push too much into the "impoverished" rationale of reducing "corruption and the appearance of corruption." They were actually trying to achieve other goals– such as political equality and greater opportunity for candidates to run and be heard–but trying to justify those goals in terms of corruption. "Efforts to tailor all campaign finance regulation to corruption," Calabresi wrote, "surely have constrained possibilities for creative proposals that may not fit comfortably into the proffered box."

The other problem with "corruption and the appearance of corruption" is that, while "corruption" is a well-defined concept but too narrow, "appearance of corruption" is the opposite–a vague, boundary-free concept. This past January, the Washington Post used the appearance of corruption to justify a story about the financial dealings of someone to whom former Senator John Edwards had sold his house, even though he had no dealings with them beyond that single, arms-length transaction. Lobbying reform is also twisted by this overly literal attempt to legislate on the concept of "appearance of corruption." For example, Jack Abramoff entertained the lawmakers who were in his pocket at his restaurant; therefore ban members and staffers from accepting meals. Abramoff took members on golfing trips to Scotland; therefore ban trips to Scotland.

But you can’t legislate integrity simply by banning things that have the same external form as things corrupt people do. Instead of going at things so literally, change the incentives so that members of Congress are accountable to voters. Many of the legislators caught up in the recent scandals were defeated in 2006, but they had been virtually unopposed in previous elections, which created a breeding ground for an attitude of moral impunity. Making sure that there is a viable, adequately funded competitor in every election is the best way to encourage integrity.

Accept that there is a place for private money in politics. Elsewhere in his marvelous concurring opinion, Calabresi wrote that making political contributions is not something to be discouraged but a reasonable means of expressing "intensity of desire" for a political outcome. Indeed. We all have one vote, but we have preferences of varying intensity, which politics should reflect. And we must choose among a finite number of candidates, which money helps sort out. That’s not unreasonable. What made the 2004 Senate candidacy of Barack Obama (who entered the race for the Democratic nomination as the underdog against one fabulously wealthy candidate and one backed by the party machine) possible, for example, was the fact that a small but significant number of people who knew him believed so strongly in his leadership that they were willing to do much more than just vote for him. It’s not a perfect way to sort out candidates, but we lack a better one that adequately reflects intensity. Imagine a hypothetical campaign financing system that gave every candidate who qualified for the ballot by signature an exactly equal amount of funds and prohibited private funds; it would be chaotic and unrepresentative because it would strip this element of intensity of desire from the system.

The obvious problem, as Calabresi wrote, is "that, given the unequal distribution of wealth, money does not measure intensity of desire equally for rich and poor," and reform should allow "both poor and rich to give financial expression to the relative intensity of their desires." The closest thing to such a balance has been achieved by matching fund systems such as New York City’s four-toone match on small contributions, created by a fortuitous political compromise in the late 1980s. Under this system, the $50 contribution of a poor person is worth $250 to the candidate, while large contributions aren’t matched at all. Because the system is open-ended, almost all candidates participate; there is very little spent by outside groups; and there have been hotly contested, multiple- candidate races for many city council seats. Although a self-financed billionaire won the mayoralty twice, the system gave Michael Bloomberg’s 2001 and 2005 opponents more than enough to be heard, $17 million and $9.2 million, respectively.

Don’t dismiss the libertarian arguments. For every argument in favor of campaign reform, there is a libertarian counter-argument. If a reformer says, "We don’t want big corporate donors spending money on ads that support a candidate," the libertarian responds, "You’re going to have a government agency decide that one kind of speech is permitted, because it’s about an issue or a product, and another is regulated, because it might influence the election?" Both are legitimate points. Campaign reformers often dismiss these dilemmas on the grounds that "money isn’t speech." But, needless to say, if you prohibit money from being spent on speech, you are restricting the speech itself.

The issue that the Supreme Court has agreed to take up this term–whether TV ads that mention a candidate during the period before an election should be treated as campaign ads for purposes of regulation–goes to the heart of this dilemma. Some pure political speech unrelated to campaigns, such as an ad urging people to call a senator to vote a certain way on a bill, is going to get caught in this web. Perhaps, as empirical studies have shown, it would only be a tiny percentage. But will that always be the case? And what level of accidental restrictions on pure political speech– the kind of speech most vigorously protected under any interpretation of the First Amendment–do we accept as the price for getting a potential loophole under control? The fact that the Court has taken the case, after earlier upholding that provision of BCRA, suggests that the justices are likely to take the libertarian argument here seriously. But reformers should too. It should always be a painful choice to limit political speech, never something to be done lightly. If a campaign finance arrangement forces one into a position where you can only make it work if you can limit these ads, then it’s time to rethink that approach.

Some libertarians, incidentally, would argue at this point that the only regulation needed is a requirement for instant disclosure of all contributions. Disclosure is, to be sure, better than non-disclosure, and "sunlight is the best disinfectant," as Justice Louis Brandeis famously said. But the idea that disclosure is by itself an alternative to regulation is one deeply rooted in the "appearance of corruption" fallacy. Much malfeasance hides in the fog of too much information. Simply knowing that some individual contributed to some politician is not enough information to fully understand what’s going on, and whether it should be a matter of concern. Even in the Abramoff case, where not only was all information about his Native American-tribe clients’ contributions publicly available, but so were many years’ worth of his e-mails, it has proved impossible to determine with any certainty whether his clients’ contributions to certain Democrats were made as part of his wheeling and dealing or for other reasons. Disclosure does very little to reduce real corruption and nothing at all to promote political equality or greater opportunity for candidates or ideas to be heard.

Expand, don’t restrict. The singular focus on corruption tends to lead reformers toward policies primarily intended to restrict the amounts and sources of money. Restrictions have the effect of increasing the power of those who are unrestricted. In other words, if you can’t close every loophole, the person or entity who controls the loophole that remains open will be significantly more powerful. If every channel of political communication except the Internet were regulated, the people who have the greatest ability to be gatekeepers of Internet access–which might be a blog or might be Time Warner–will have a greatly enhanced level of power.

And even if you could restrict every avenue, would you want to? The goal of political reform should be to expand the range of choices and voices in the system. It should be easier to run for office, easier to be heard, easier to find alternatives to the potentially corrupting corporate funding. Such alternatives change the incentives for candidates and parties.