What effect does the soft money loophole have on the public financing of presidential campaigns?
The soft-money loophole has effectively undermined the system of partial public financing of presidential campaigns established in the wake of the Watergate scandal. During the 1996 election, both President Clinton and Senator Dole directly participated in the raising of enormous amounts of soft money for their respective parties. The parties subsequently used this money to pay for a barrage of sham issue advocacy television advertisements that allowed the Clinton and Dole campaigns to ignore spending limits they had agreed to in exchange for public financing of their campaigns. Unless the soft money loop is closed, it will be a simple matter for candidates to evade the spending limits associated with public financing of presidential campaigns.
