When President Obama took office in 2009, I was of the opinion that his first policy objective should be meaningful campaign finance reform. Why? Because if our ultimate goals are things like universalizing health care and slowing global warming, meaningful legislation on these topics is unlikely to emerge as long as our Congressional elections are dominated by money from corporate interests and the very wealthy. Since then, of course, it has become obvious that eliminating the Senate filibuster is a second requirement for any real progress in Washington, but that is a topic for another diary.
A focus on campaign finance reform is also an excellent way to show independents that you're on their side, and those opposing reform measures are made to look like corporate tools. One challenge, though, is a supreme court stacked with strange creatures who come from a universe where money is speech and corporations are people. Hence the Citizens United case, opening the floodgates for corporations to make unlimited contributions to third party organizations that influence elections, and pushing our precarious democracy even farther from the will of the people.
The court takes a particularly dim view of hard limits on campaign spending. Hence, multi-millionaire candidates can spend as much as they please, the current limits on individual political donations are feared vulnerable to being overturned, and now both biological persons and corporate person are free to funnel millions into political accounts like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's campaign fund. One way out of this mess is the the http://www.publicampaign.org/ framework: the rich can spend as much as they like, but an opponent who abides by certain rules is eligible to receive the same amount from a public fund. I strongly support this system, but politically it can be vulnerable to a "no tax money for politicians" campaign from those who prefer the current system of government by and for the rich.
Today I had a curious idea, so I googled it and of course it wasn't original (PDF of an academic article). But I like anyway: instead of putting hard limits on political funding, put a hefty tax on it. That way Rupert Murdoch and his corporate assets are still "free" to spend on elections - it simply costs more. From a legal standponit, the courts already agree that political speech can have a price tag, and many forms of speech are already taxed (for example, some cities tax billboard advertising).
My specific suggestion: put a 100% tax on all political contributions over $1000 to candidates or to advocacy groups that run election ads. Use that money to provide matching funds to the opposing candidate or to advocacy groups that wish to make a rebuttal argument in the same election. That way ordinary Americans see that they're not the ones paying for clean election matching funds, and there's a financial disincentive against flooding elections with corporate money in the first place.
That's my humble suggestion. Above all, we can't be complacent and accept Citizens United as our new reality. Otherwise we could be looking at this: