Word: soft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Because of the dominance of TV over print media, Rich said journalism in America is increasingly moving toward "soft news" and away from serious issues, such as the Clinton health care bili or welfare reform...
...money donated "for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office." That retooling essentially made it a crime only to raise on federal property the small amounts of "hard money" that go straight to the candidates ($1,000 or less per donor) and exempted the huge amounts of "soft money" funneled to the parties...
Nothing sinister was at work. Soft money had hardly been minted in those days; lawmakers simply wanted to reconcile the wording in two different statutes. "They weren't trying to do anything sneaky," says Fred Wertheimer, former head of Common Cause. But even if the loophole was opened by accident, Reno and her lawyers concluded, the restrictions did not apply to the hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated, soft-money contributions...
That doesn't mean the process is pretty to watch, which helps account for Gore's extraordinary performance last week. His suggestion that he wasn't pressuring donors for soft money struck other fund raisers as ludicrous. Given his position, they allege, the call itself is a form of shakedown. When a Vice President phones potential donors, the White House operator comes on the line and says, "Hold for the Vice President," or a steely-toned military aide barks, "Hold for Sawhorse," using Gore's code name. It's not as if they have much choice...
...then there's the concern about what Gore might be able to do if a donor refused. "Getting a call from Al Gore and getting a call from me are two completely different things," says Wayne Berman, who last year raised more soft money than any other Republican financier. "If I ask a guy for $100,000, the donor can tell me to go jump in the lake. When Al Gore does it, the donor can't say that, and he has to wonder, Does he have my privates in his hand? Now most people in Washington know that...