Super PACs Actually Are Worse Than Nothing

Super PACs, the major players in the post-Citizens United world of campaign finance, only have one rule of any significance: they cannot coordinate with a candidate's campaign. That's it, really: no limitations on contributions from humans or corporations, no disclosure requirements, etc. But as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are ably demonstrating, that rule is a sham. Colbert, the "candidate," and Stewart, the Super PAC manager, spent a few minutes the other day sitting on the set of The Daily Show exchanging plans for the Super PAC's activities, but with the extremely-thin-veneer of talking to the audience instead of each other. Then they demonstrated that Jon could tell Stephen his plans for future advertising and Stephen could speak the sentence "I cannot coordinate with you in any way" with either a giant grin on his face or a worried look, with Jon taking the obvious inference, while staying within the bounds of the law, and that, even if they were fined for any violations, they could pay those fines with Super PAC money. In other words, the non-coordinate rule scarcely has any bark, let alone bite. This means, as best I can tell, that Super PAC-world is just like totally-unregulated-campaign-finance world except that, instead of ads being run by campaigns in their own name, they get run by group with names of a comparable silliness to Stephen's "American for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow." In other words, compared to zero campaign finance restrictions whatsoever, Super PACs serve only to reduce transparency and accountability. Great.