The Senate, it seems, is rediscovering the best of itself. Halfway through a two-week debate on campaign finance reform, whose final destination is still unclear, senators have been reinventing the tradition of parliamentary debate in a House evenly divided over a subject that touches all politicians to the core.
Tom Daschle, the Democratic minority leader, regrets the bitter partisanship of recent years and says it's "refreshing". "That's the way the Senate used to operate all the time. You didn't know what was going to happen. You'd lay a bill down, you'd let the Senate work its will, and you either supported or opposed it. And I really wish we'd go back to that more."
And it could go any way. Amendments put and agreed already - like that to require TV stations always to charge politicians their lowest rates for TV ads, or one raising contribution limits for those fighting ultra-rich self-financing opponents - may expand the basic bill's constituency, or like the "poison pills" being put down by opponents, scupper its chances entirely.
Orin Hatch, the Utah Republican, had just such a pill in mind on Wednesday when he unsuccessfully proposed an amendment requiring unions and companies to seek explicit member/shareholder consent ahead of all political donations.
Had the amendment been passed, key Democrats might well have reconsidered their support for the amended bill. Yesterday, however, there were signs that an emerging compromise might be a runner - a ban on "soft" money in return for raised limits on "hard" money.
Hard money is that donated to individual candidates for their use as they see fit and comes in two forms: individual donations, limited to $1,000 per donor per campaign, and donations to "political action committees", limited to $3,000 per campaign. The latter, which have huge clout, distribute cash across the country to candidates supporting favoured causes.
Soft money, on the other hand, is unregulated cash paid to parties ostensibly for recruitment and party-building. It is not supposed to feature or promote individual candidates, but by highlighting their views on issues associated with their candidates or opponents, parties have driven a coach and four through the intent of the law.
Soft-money contributions soared in the last election cycle - jumping from $22 million in 1984 to more than $480 million last year. Instead of being limited to $1,000 contributions to a candidate, many people are now sending hundreds of thousands of dollars into politics under the soft-money label. And when such individuals and groups also have legislative interests at stake, it raises serious ethical concerns.
"Watergate reforms were prompted by the shock that one donor had given more than $1 million to a campaign. In this last election cycle, more than 140 donors gave at least $1 million each," says Trevor Potter, co-chair of the Campaign Finance Institute.
Republicans raise slightly more soft money that Democrats while they continue to far outpace them on the hard money front - by $447 million to $270 million in November's elections.
The leading bill, sponsored by Arizona Republican and former Presidential candidate, John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat, Russell Fein gold, would stem the growing flow of cash into the political system by banning unregulated soft money donations to political parties and restricting issue ads by independent groups.
The McCain-Feingold measure has been approved twice by the House of Representatives but killed by Senate filibusters in four of the last five years.
Republican opponents led by Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, have seen their potential for filibuster severely limited for the first time by the new coalition assembled by the bill's sponsors, but still vow to fight the proposal and say in its present form it is an unconstitutional restriction of free speech rights that would be struck down by the courts if passed.
The chief threat is posed by an alternative bill offered by Nebraska Republican, Chuck Hagel, one of Mr McCain's closest friends in the Senate.
Its provisions, which have drawn the support of some Democratic senators and President Bush, would cap soft money donations to political parties at $60,000 and triple the limit on individual hard money contributions to $3,000 per candidate per election.
Mr Hagel said his bill begins to try to stem the runaway growth of soft money in the political system. Mr McCain and Mr Feingold dismiss it as a way to institutionalise soft money donations.
But Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, an ardent opponent of McCain-Feingold, says he supports the Hagel bill and does not think McCain-Feingold had a good chance of passing as written.
The final product approved by the Senate, he told journalists this week,"will be an amalgam of the two bills and other ideas out there".
"It's very rare that you see the kind of quid pro quo that constitutes bribery," says Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development, the first major business organisation to recommend abolishing soft money. "The system is much more subtle than that. But even with the subtlety, the system doesn't look good."
psmyth@irish-times.ie
