According to a July 30 editorial in the Washington Post, you can stop worrying about Congress response to the nations energy crisis. While youre at it, you can forget about the Patients Bill of Rights, and dont worry about the House appropriations bills either because, according to the Post, the budget isnt important right now. "The most important business in the House will be none of those," admonishes the Post. "[I]t will be the filing of a discharge petition to force a straight up-or-down vote after Labor Day on campaign finance reform." Look out PETA, theres a dead horse at the Post and a lot of angry editors with clubs.
With all this attention to campaign finance reform in the Washington Post and other like-minded newspapers, youd assume the issue was of huge national interest, right? Wrong.
According to a FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, conducted over July 11-12, 2001 (+/- 3%), only 8 percent of respondents felt campaign finance reform was an important issue to them. And what about those issues the Post would like Congress to put on hold for a while? Of those polled, 37 percent said a health care bill with a patients bill of rights was the "most important" issue to them; 32 percent said an "education reform bill"; 14 percent said a "comprehensive energy development plan."
It appears the Washington Post may be a little out of touch with issues that real people actually care about. In fact, if it werent for the Posts and other media outlets blind obsession with the subject of campaign finance reform, the American people might have already forgotten the whole unconstitutional affair.
However, despite using its ink to create the perception of public interest in this issue, the Post is, after all, only exercising its editors First Amendment right to free expression. And that right, well remind them, as it relates to political campaigns, is the reason we and others are fighting Shays-Meehan.
September 2001