NYP: MR. SMITH QUITS WASHINGTON - Brad Smith as the Cassandra of campaign "reform."

New York Post ^ | June 17, 2005 | RYAN SAGER

[OESY]

Later this summer, the First Amendment will lose its most valuable ally in the Bush administration: FEC Commissioner Brad Smith.

From his perch at the Federal Election Commission, Smith has long sounded a brave — if lonely — note of caution against America's increasingly disastrous experiments with campaign-finance reform....

In his time at the FEC, Smith has served as the whipping boy of the campaign-finance-reform "movement" — the slew of "clean government" groups funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and seven other liberal foundations, plus Sen. John McCain and his merry band of speech police. But they've never been able to lay a finger on his understanding of the law and his fundamental critique of the very idea that the federal government should be in the business of regulating political speech....

One of the most important points in his 2001 book, which has been proved in spades by the failure of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms passed in 2002, is that no amount of regulation can truly control money in politics.

"There's not a stopping point here," Smith says. "As soon as you pass one reform, there's going to be another."

And, in fact, as soon as we had one election under McCain-Feingold's rules, the reformers were back calling for new regulations, such as a crackdown on so-called 527s, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the MoveOn.org Voter Fund.

Even more worrisome, in Smith's mind, is that, while the reformers have always claimed their laws would pose no threat to freedom of the press, the blurring of lines between journalists and average citizens is putting McCain-Feingold's vaunted "press exemption" in peril....

"John McCain doesn't want someone who will follow the law, he wants someone who will do what he says."

[OESY]

Speaking from his home in Virginia, yesterday, Smith discussed with me how some of the predictions from his 2001 book, "Unfree Speech," have borne out and what the pitfalls for the FEC will be going forward.

[Guenevere]

Oh....that Brad :)

I thought it meant Brad & Angelina !!

Just saw Mr.& Mrs. Smith........and I liked it a lot!...a dark comedy, for sure, but it works!

[goldstategop]

We'll miss him. He was a prophetic voice against government regulation of free speech. As it turned out, the politicians had other ideas and if the past is any guide, the short-comings of government ham-handedness are not going to make them reconsider the entire "campaign reform" premise. Instead, look for even more restrictions on speech in the future. All in the name of deterring corruption, of course.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)