Cleaning Up Campaigns

Watergate's most positive result may well be reform of U.S. campaign laws. Since the scandal began, scores of bills have been filed in Congress to end corrupt election practices. Without mentioning Watergate, President Nixon last week outlined his own recommendations for curbing what he delicately called "campaign abuses recently publicized and of years gone by." The eight-page message read like a list of campaign abuses charged to Nixon's own political associates. The President's main points:

CAMPAIGN FINANCE. Nixon would limit individual contributions to $15,000 for a presidential election and $3,000 for a congressional election. Because the limits apply separately to primaries, runoffs and general elections, a person could give up to $30,000 to a presidential candidate and $9,000 to a congressional candidate. The President would prohibit cash contributions of more than $50 and any loans or gifts of stock to candidates, and would permit candidates to have only one political committee each, to prevent them from using dummy committees to conceal the size and source of donations.

CAMPAIGN PRACTICES. The President also would make into federal crimes many "dirty tricks" in presidential and congressional elections. Among them: disseminating false instructions to workers, organizing slander campaigns, and rigging opinion polls.

Nixon urged the parties to move the national political conventions from the traditional July-August dates to September. His purpose is to shorten campaigns. He also proposed repeal of the "equal time provision" in order to permit TV and radio networks more flexibility in providing free time to major candidates.

Though many of the President's ideas are sound, Congress will probably not pay much attention to them because Nixon's intentions are suspect on Capitol Hill. Senator Edward Kennedy called the message a "thinly veiled attempt by the President to obstruct or even kill the most effective response Congress has yet made to Watergate."Nixon implied that he would veto the public-financing measures, which have drawn support from Congress despite presidential opposition.

The Senate Rules Committee last month approved a bill to ban all private contributions to candidates receiving public financing in a general election. The bill would provide about $24 million from federal income tax return checkoff revenues for the campaign of each major party's presidential candidate in 1976. The full Senate will probably debate the bill later this month, while the House may accept a plan to use checkoff money to match private gifts to presidential campaigns.

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