I have always been of two minds on campaign finance laws. On the one hand I do not want people able to buy an election. On the other hand, stronger limits seem to benefit incumbents. So all of the reform has made the existing politicians even more entrenched.
But I think we may be taking the wrong approach. The big cost is TV ads with radio a distant second. Remove those costs and the entire issue goes away. So the key issue is the paid media costs.
Every TV and radio station has a license from the federal government giving it permission to broadcast on the public airwaves. The government owns the airwaves and the licenses come up for periodic review.
So...
What if as a condition of having a license, each station had to deliver N hours of free commercial time to candidates. The amount and when could be spread out as appropriate. Some could go to the parties to allocate as they wish and some could go directly to the candidates.
After all, it's our airwaves, not theirs. If we want to make this a condition of our granting use of our property, that absolutely is our right as the property owner. And they can always choose to not renew their license.
And how to handle it during the primary would be difficult to work out as a credible challenger to the incumbent should get airtime while a flake wanting free publicity should not. But that's a detail.
The key part is having to buy commercial time would go away. And with that, the need to raise significant sums of money would also go away. So we could then keep or eliminate the campaign finance laws - they really wouldn't matter.
And the candidates could spend more time both campaigning and once elected on making good laws. And a lot less time raising money.
