e government, but the people-individually as citizens and candidates and collectively as associations and political committees-who must retain control over the quantity and range of debate on public issues in a political campaign (Keena 6). While it may be a violation of freedom of speech to limit television ads, many of todays candidates have made a mockery of the existing legislature regarding campaign financing. Ex-president Bill Clinton bent the rules and laws more than possibly any elected official ever, and certainly farther than anyone since Richard Nixon. Thad Cochran, a veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, stated, Clinton used his own party and had it operated out of the campaign office, which was the White House, to coordinate expenditures by the Democratic Party and his election campaign in an unlimited amount, using soft money to pay for the ads, with his own chief-of-staff making the decisions about the kind of advertising, and Clinton himself was involved in writing some of the ads that were actually run by the Democratic Party using soft money (Williams 10). No elected official had ever gone so far as to run soft money ads out of his own office, let alone rewrite the ads himself. It is cases such as this one that are prime examples for why there is such a need for new laws to govern campaign financing. According to John Quincy Adams, our nations second president, To pay money to secure an election, whether directly or indirectly, is incorrect in principle (Gillon 201). It seems as though todays candidates care little about principle, as it becomes increasingly apparent they just want to do whatever it takes to win. Anyone in doubt that elections seem to go strictly to the candidate raising the most money will find that a shocking statistic. In every election since 1976, the candidate who has won his partys nomination for the presidency has been the one that raised the most money in the year preceding the election,...
