Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexander Rogge, and today we're talking about campaign finance reform.

My guest is the Feingold in McCain-Feingold, that is the bipartisan campaign reform act of 2002.

He served as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin for 18 years, where he was known for his fiercely

principled and independent approach to issues, rather than a strict adherence to party lines.

Senator Russ Feingold, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Alexander, and thank you for the kind words.

I have checked, and about half of our listeners listen from outside the United States.

So before we launch in to talk about your role in all of this, can you help non-Americans understand political finance in the United States?

I think it's relevant all over the world, even though a lot of countries aren't at the point

where they're worrying specifically about campaign finance, the related issue of corruption,

which is often connected with the campaign finance issue, is an enormous issue.

It's one of the reasons that there's been a change of government, a president

in South Africa. It's been overwhelmingly influential in the politics of China in the last few years.

It has been a big issue, of course, with the issues it had to do with Ukraine. You name it,

it is one of the biggest influences. So the way I would explain it is, even though campaign finance might sound like an issue

only having to do with who wins campaigns and who has the most money in a campaign, really what's

happened in our country in the United States is the corruption of campaign finances,

the abuse that affects what comes out of the Congress and what becomes a law

is interconnected with campaign finance. And that should be something that people can relate to

anywhere in the world. Do you think it's more extreme in the United States? It's getting very extreme

here. It was not. It was under some reasonable controls. It was certainly a problem,

but it got worse and worse in the 80s and the 90s. We were able to sort of put the genie

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