Via Josh Gerstein, who has mined the latest set of released Clinton docs, comes a single page on campaign finance from Michael Waldman’s files.  (Waldman was a Clinton speechwriter and now heads the Brennan Center for Justice, which supports campaign finance laws.)  It is not clear who wrote what in the following document p. 464 of the pdf):

Two questions:

1. Who in DOJ was ready to argue for constitutionality of spending limits in the Supreme Court? Was this meant to be an extension of Austin, which upheld spending limits applied to corporations (reversed years later in Citizens United)?

2. Did leading Democrats actually believe a soft money ban was a good thing, or was this all political posturing? After all, it was the Clinton campaign against Bob Dole which pioneered the use of soft money.

The piece also shows that at the time of this writing, the idea that the Court could overrule Buckley in favor of greater regulation was a real possibility.  Today, of course, if Buckley falls it would be in the direction of lesser regulation.

Anyone recognize any handwriting?