Soft money: It wasn't meant to turn out this way

IT'S time for a reunion of the class of Campaign '88. Say hello again to Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk.

They were the Republican and Democratic national party chairmen who started the soft-money ball rolling a dozen years ago. They are shocked and disgusted today at how both parties are playing hardball with soft money. And how the rules have been so badly bent that both parties are openly flouting the spirit, if not the letter, of the laws.

``In all honesty, I am shocked at the way it has turned out,'' said Fahrenkopf, the ex-GOP chair who is now a Washington lobbyist. ``I was shocked to see that everybody has gotten away with it. Something has got to be done.''

``It's not the way it has to be and it's not the way it should be,'' said Kirk, the ex-Democratic chair who is now a Boston-Washington lawyer. ``But the disgusting and depressing part of it is that this is the way it is going to continue to be -- unless someone puts a stop to it. The political parties have become nothing more than money machines.''

Today Democratic and Republican national committees are raising humongous soft money -- perhaps as much as $500 million for Campaign 2000 -- mainly to pay for a TV blitz. Vice President Gore says Democrats won't air the first soft-money ads -- but theirs will be up a nanosecond after the GOP's. Republican party spokesman Clifford May says: ``Our time frame will not depend on what the Democrats do.''

How can hard currency become ``soft money'' -- legally given in unlimited amounts? Give it to the party under the guise of being for purely educational party-building purposes. As contrasted with the impurely political candidate-electing purposes.

Right.

Fahrenkopf and Kirk both remember how and why the game began. It was the Democrats who started it.

At the onset of Campaign '88 -- the presidential race of Vice President Bush vs. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis -- Republicans had a huge money advantage. So the Democrats' top fund-raiser, Robert Farmer, suggested that his party use a loophole in the post-Watergate reforms and asked its wealthiest givers to give more than ever before -- $100,000 -- which would be legal if the checks were made out to the party and used only for ``party building.''

``Mike Dukakis didn't like the idea at all,'' said Kirk. But he agreed.

Fahrenkopf remembers the day his fund-raiser, Robert Mosbacher, clued him in: ``Mosbacher came in and said he was worried sick about what Farmer was up to. He told me and said we have to do the same thing. My reaction? I objected! I said there's something unseemly about taking $100,000 from one person. Bush didn't like it either. But then he went along with it. We were so careful to make sure they never mentioned George Bush or Michael Dukakis -- and certainly never showed their pictures . . . I always thought as party chairman it was against the law to use party soft money to promote the candidacy of a president. Our ads simply said: `Vote Republican.' ''

Tame stuff today, but big news then to a city that thought it had reformed big money out of politics. The Washington Post's Nov. 17, 1988 headline: ``Big Donations Again A Campaign Staple; Not Since 1972 Have Presidential Races Seen Such Money.''

President Clinton converted the soft-money loophole into his political life preserver in his panic after the GOP's midterm sweep of 1994. He ordered a massive TV ad campaign, a soft-money hard-sell on the virtues of his presidency. At all cost. Soon Americans were educated to how political money can be minted in apolitical places -- from Abe Lincoln's Bedroom in D.C. to Buddha's temple in L.A.

``It's sad for me,'' said Kirk, of the way both parties now play the soft money game. ``I'd always envisioned that what was raised would mainly be used for party infrastructure. Now it's just a media buy -- and a wink at the party-building rationale. It's like an arms race out of control.''

Ask both ex-chairmen separately if anything makes them optimistic today and you get the same reply: ``It's no accident why John McCain caught on,'' said Kirk. ``John McCain showed that the public wants a different sort of politics from the parties,'' said Fahrenkopf. McCain champions an end to soft money. Gore does too, now. But Republicans say they won't ban soft money until labor unions are forced to get rank-and-file approval of each contribution -- an old cynical complaint that isn't really about soft money.

``Something has got to be done,'' says Fahrenkopf. ``It will take real leadership -- from the next president and the leader of the opposition -- to make change happen.''