Bill Bennett: “If, indeed, we want to increase the amount of public confidence in the system and candidate participation in the system…”

“If, indeed, we want to increase the amount of public confidence in the system and candidate participation in the system, we should remove the restrictions that now make it virtually impossible for anybody other than the well-known or the well-funded. The reforms we have make it impossible for him to spend it supporting anybody else, unless, of course, he does it in the terrible, dreaded form of soft money. And I will talk about that in a minute. But right now I want to focus again on the historic fact that, in the name of campaign finance reform, we have restricted rather than expanded the opportunities of politicians to get their message across.”