Jan Baran and Robert Bauer have a must-read op-ed in the New York Times today (not, thankfully, in the TimesDelete black hole).

Baran is a lawyer for Republicans and Bauer a lawyer for Democrats. In their piece, they lay out the case that campaign-finance reform has accomplished precisely nothing (except fattening their own wallets, as politicians pay them to navigate our increasingly Byzantine system).

Here's a sample:

Our law practices, which have grown tenfold since 1981, have certainly prospered from the seemingly unappeasable demand for reform. But it cannot be said that others -- those active in the political process, or the public at large -- have done nearly as well. The law is not only increasingly complex but, in many cases, counterintuitive, requiring ever more nuanced clarifications from regulators.

Some reformers genuinely believe that it is possible to drive money out of politics and still observe the command of the First Amendment. Others see practical advantages. Many politicians favored McCain-Feingold because it prohibited certain advertising that mentioned opponents' names, or because it authorized them to raise more money if they were challenged by wealthy, free-spending opponents. The bill also attempted to strike at "negative" political speech -- known to ordinary Americans by its other name, "criticism"-- by requiring candidates to publicly approve their ad content.

In 2004, the first election year during which McCain-Feingold was in effect, negative campaigns overwhelmed the government's efforts to discourage them, and fund-raising records fell beneath the frenzied pace of collections by candidates, parties and interest groups.

By 2005, a rash of scandals, including the Abramoff and Cunningham cases, had answered the question of whether this legal crusade would quash corruption.

This is an extremely important point. Campaign-finance-regulation champions pretend that their "reforms" have "worked" -- though no one can define what having "worked" might even mean. They constantly lower the bar and declare themselves to have cleared it.

Meanwhile, government is as corrupt as ever, and incumbents are more entrenched than ever.

Given how ineffective Sen. John McCain's trademark domestic policy reform has been, I might even propose an '08 campaign slogan: A reformer without results.