The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that the McCain-Feingold law’s ban on soft money is constitutional has reformers cheering.

But even Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor acknowledged the obvious in their opinion: “Money, like water, will always find an outlet.” So the notion that the reform will be effective as opposed to merely legal (by one vote) remains highly doubtful.

Already dozens of groups have been set up to receive the equivalent of both parties’ soft money in ways that pass legal muster and to use those funds to bankroll ads and other campaign efforts throughout 2004.

The conceit that we can legislate money out of politics is naive.

The only way to democratize campaigns is by injecting public financing in ways that offset the influence of big political donations. The trick is to do so in ways that might be acceptable to conservatives, who loathe public financing as “welfare for politicians” administered from on high by (liberal) bureaucrats.

There is a creative answer that could break this stalemate, an innovation that close readers of this column will know is one of my hobbyhorses. It’s a plan called Patriot dollars, the brainchild of Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman.

Ackerman’s idea is simple: Give every registered voter a $50 voucher that he or she can spend to support candidates or political organizations in federal elections. Ackerman would issue voters a special “Patriot” ATM card. Each election cycle the government would automatically credit their Patriot accounts with $50 each.

Candidates and organizations that met some minimal threshold of legitimacy would be eligible to solicit and compete for the funds. Citizens would “vote” their dollars from any ATM machine, where new software will have facilitated this use.

You can see instantly the beauty of this idea. Instead of limiting political “speech” (which most plans to cap private money do, perhaps unconstitutionally), it increases it. Instead of having some central bureaucracy manage public funds, it lets individuals make their own choices.

And here’s the clincher: Fifty dollars for each of America’s roughly 100 million voters means that $5 billion in new campaign cash gets injected via the grassroots – more than offsetting the $3 billion raised largely from special interests in

the 2000 campaign cycle.

“It transforms campaign finance from an inegalitarian embarrassment into a new occasion for civic responsibility,” Ackerman told me. Before long coffee shops and bars might be filled with folks debating how to use their Patriot dollars wisely.

In addition, candidates might put at the center of their campaigns issues that don’t get attention now because they appeal to millions of voters who have no voice in today’s money primary.

Under a system of Patriot dollars, a candidate who wanted to talk about, say, America’s 44 million uninsured, might find a large constituency ready to vote their $50 to assure that such a candidacy was viable.

Think of it as Howard Dean’s campaign on financial steroids – able to truly compete with President Bush’s unprecedented private-dollar Rolodex.

There are details to be worked out, of course. How should funds be split between primaries and general elections, and how do we make sure people can’t sell their Patriot dollars – as happens, for example, with food stamps? Legislators would obviously have to work through these challenges. But the first step is to focus on the big idea.

“Conceptually, I think there’s a lot of merit to the idea,” Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who co-authored the House version of McCain-Feingold, told me. Shays supports public financing of campaigns and thinks Ackerman’s notion of implementing this via individuals might change the way conservatives viewed the matter. “The question is, could you try it in a smaller way?” Shays said. “The one value to having states do things is that they become your laboratory.”

Ackerman told me he thought that was a sensible idea – though he naturally wanted a big state like California to take the lead.

Before we let the celebrations blind us to the fact that McCain-Feingold won’t really address what ails American campaigns, why not seize the moment to think more creatively about what the scope of real reform would entail?

Matthew Miller is a syndicated columnist and author. Reach him on the Web at www.mattmilleronline.com.