Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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As Director of Cato's Center for Representative Government,

John Samples has been a conscientious skeptic

of the need for and efficacy of campaign finance reform. John is the first to admit that campaign

finance reform looks like a good idea but that its impact on the health of our

democracy is anything but good. In his new book The The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform, he makes his case

clear. John joins us for today's podcast.

What is the relationship between speech and money?

In the United States, any kind of political speech that you undertake is really going to be involved with money in one way or the other, and you have to spend money to make your speech heard.

That means that if there's regulation of the speech you can also

regulate or restrict free speech. It's also true that campaign contributions in particular

have a way of speaking on their own that is they are a kind of

endorsement by individuals or groups of certain candidates these endorsements can

guide the votes or thinking of other voters.

What happens when those endorsements drown out the endorsements of lesser-known candidates who are less wealthy?

I think it's true that very often that doesn't happen in the United States in the sense that you've got a number of different positions that are represented across the board.

It's not clear that that is a big issue and I should say also it's not clear that other candidates who are less wealthy or more importantly can't raise the money from others

Have very much of a following in the United States or a potential for having that kind of following.

We've seen time and again that even something like Howard Dean's long shot outside campaign

or even in the past, frankly, libertarian political campaigns that didn't have a whole lot of

...