Yes, money talks, and it's up to the voters to listen

While we recognize that the enormous amount of money that has been pouring into political campaigns can have a corrosive effect, we don't think there is a neat, clean way of correcting that.
Those who say there is an easy way are contributing to another problem in politics -- a growing and dangerous sense that no one can believe anything that anyone says in Washington. The issue of trustworthiness in the political class goes beyond money.
To hear the proponents of the McCain-Feingold bill -- including its authors, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. -- tell it, "soft money" is the great Satan of American politics. Their bill would virtually ban the donations that corporations, unions and wealthy individuals give political parties.
Bill of Rights: We find ourselves among those who see a constitutional problem with that approach.
We have always seen the First Amendment's protection of free speech to have a broad reach. It's more than being able to stand on a soap box in Central Square and make a political speech. It covers even as despicable an act as flag-burning, when the burning is done in the context of political dissent. It covers KKK parades, and even the rights of wrong-headed people to stand in a public place and say hateful things. And it covers the right of a person to spend his or her money to support a political candidate or political cause.
Our Constitution is not always a convenient document. It sometimes makes our lives a bit more difficult, but it almost always makes us free.
But we are not so naive as to believe that money spent in support of a candidate is always spent with a pure heart. Some big spenders want far more for their money than they're entitled to have.
Let public beware: For that reason, we believe it is important for campaign finance reform to recognize that the public has a right to know who is pouring enormous amounts of money into whose campaigns.
Secret slush funds have no place in a democracy.
Fortunately, just as the trend has grown for larger and larger amounts of spending on political campaigns, the technology has developed to allow a quick and accurate accounting of those contributions.
It is the responsibility of an informed public to decide for itself whether its politicians are catering to their political benefactors to the detriment of the nation at large. If they uncover rascals, it is their obligation to throw them out.
While that may not be the most efficient way of doing things, and it may not be the most convenient or most reliable, it is the best we can do within the Constitution.