THE WHITE HOUSE

By J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND KAREN TUMULTY

Even as the President last week was sweet-talking big Democratic Party donors into pledging $250,000 each, the Clinton Administration was readying a new feint on the campaign-finance front: trying to reverse the Supreme Court's landmark 1976 ruling, Buckley v. Valeo, which held that limits on candidates' spending infringe on their free speech. Last fall Clinton boosted his efforts to pass the McCain-Feingold bill that would curb soft money and give candidates cheap TV time, but now it's pretty much dead. Two weeks ago, he asked the Federal Election Commission to ban soft money by regulation, a request most reformers regarded as only a gesture. The Justice Department is now eyeing some pending cases from the Midwest, hoping one might be the ticket to persuade the court that unbridled spending is so corrosive to democracy that its First Amendment absolutism is outmoded. Court watchers say it's a long shot at best.

--By J.F.O. McAllister and Karen Tumulty