Centrist Censor - We've now been Schoen the true face of "campaign finance reform.".

[Ubiquitous]

Our friend Doug Schoen, the Democratic pollster, is a political centrist,
ideologically much closer to the post-1994 Bill Clinton than to Barack
Obama. That makes all the more troubling his advocacy of government
censorship of political speech, the kind of expression that is at the
core of First Amendment protection.

Schoen finds it "more than just disquieting" but "shameful and
embarrassing" that, as the New York Times reported (and we noted) last
week, Chicago Cubs part-owner Joe Ricketts considered funding an
anti-Obama super PAC ad that would have reminded voters about the
president's "spiritual mentor," Jeremiah Wright. Under political
pressure, Obama in 2008 repudiated the America-hating pastor, whose views
even the New York Times concedes are "clearly racist."

"Speaking frankly," Schoen writes, "racially divisive negative
advertisements of this sort do not belong in a presidential election.
Whether one supports the president or not, he should be judged on his
record, and an ad hominem attack of any sort should have no home in the
public arena."

He would like to use the power of the government to suppress this speech
of which he disapproves, as he has made clear in other columns. His
complaint about the Ricketts ad that wasn't shows just what a pernicious
idea this is and why the Supreme Court was right to uphold free speech in
the celebrated case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission .

Schoen's objection to the Ricketts ad proposal is imprecise, to say the
least. In particular, he doesn't quite seem to know the meaning of the
phrase "ad hominem." The argumentum ad hominem--"argument to the man"--is
high on any list of logical fallacies. It consists of citing irrelevant
facts about a person's actions or character in an effort to undermine his
position.

An example that we noted last week is this passage by the New York
Times's Frank Bruni, who objected to Rush Limbaugh's statement that
President Obama "had decided to 'lead a war' on traditional marriage":
"Seems to me Limbaugh started those hostilities long ago, if not with his
first divorce then certainly with his second and third." Limbaugh's
divorces are immaterial to the case for or against same-sex marriage, so
that Bruni's argument was fallacious.

Two points are often overlooked about ad hominem arguments. First, they
are not always fallacious. Sometimes a fact about the man can discredit
his position. If it turned out, for instance, that an opponent of
same-sex marriage had quietly gone to New York and married a person of
the same sex, that would undermine his position by calling its sincerity
into question. If the head of an American auto maker turned out to drive
a foreign car, that would be a legitimate reason to be suspicious of his
claims about the superior quality of his company's products.

Second, an ad hominem argument can be positive as well as negative. John
Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for instance, was founded
entirely upon an ad hominem argument: that the members' antiwar position
was credible because they had served in the war. There would have been
little rhetorical advantage in forming a group called Postgraduate
Potheads Against the War, although surely many people would have
qualified for membership.

Schoen's contention that "an ad hominem attack of any sort should have no
home in the public arena" is bizarre in the context of a political
campaign. Such a contest is a choice between men, not merely an abstract
comparison of issue positions. Even to the extent that it is the latter,
character is important: A voter has to judge, among other things, the
sincerity of the candidates' convictions and their competence to carry
out their promises.

Every political campaign is an ad hominem argument--a claim that the man
seeking the office is fit for it. Mitt Romney argues that his business
experience qualifies him to make economic policy. The Obama campaign has
responded with an ad hominem attack--an advertisement featuring workers
who lost their jobs after a Bain Capital investment failed. This ad may
be unfair and misleading, but even if it's completely truthful, it's
still ad hominem.

Barack Obama ran for president saying, as he put it in his 2008
convention speech, that he would realize "America's promise--the promise
of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides
and unite in common effort." His connection with figures like Wright gave
reason to doubt the sincerity of such professions. His actions as
president have shown that such doubts were fully justified.

Inasmuch as Schoen is arguing that Obama's actions as president are more
pertinent than those before he took office in reaching a judgment about
his re-election, we tend to agree. It sounds as though the proposed
Ricketts ad would have been a waste of money (especially now that the New
York Times has demonstrated its willingness to propagate the message free
of charge).

But Schoen's appetite for government censorship of political speech
_based on his disapproval of its content_, and his insouciance about even
articulating a coherent standard to explain his disapproval, shows why it
is so important to guard our First Amendment rights vigilantly. Schoen is
in no sense a political extremist, yet he is eager to stifle dissent.

Schoen makes one other argument that deserves a response:

Perhaps this makes me a bit of an anachronism, but I still
firmly believe that a presidential campaign is supposed to
be a dialogue--or a battle--between the two campaigns and
parties. Super PACs change the equation so that elections
are reduced to a situation where candidates and their henchmen
are responding to moves made by outside groups.

The solution to this problem isn't more censorship, as Schoen argues, but
less. The Supreme Court has held, wrongly in our view, that lawmakers
have the authority to limit contributions to candidates and parties. But
they have no obligation to do so. If Congress passed legislation
abolishing all such limits, it would obviate much of the incentive to
form super PACs. The censorship Schoen advocates is not even necessary to
achieve his goal.