he letter from the Republican Party to Bristol-Myers Squibb is as subtle as a sledgehammer. The Republicans expect a $250,000 contribution. The payoff? Jim Nicholson, then the Republican National Committee chairman, encloses the Republican health care package and asks for suggested changes. "We must keep the lines of communications open," he tells the drug giant ominously, "if we want to continue passing legislation that will benefit your industry."

The Bristol-Myers shakedown is part of the record in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, the challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law now before the Supreme Court. It is one of a stack of documents detailing just how corporate executives and billionaires convert six-figure contributions into meetings with members of Congress, and a role in writing legislation. It is, by now, no great surprise that this goes on. But these documents still shock, by how blatant the deals are, and how willing the participants are to write it all down.

Much of the record in the case remains secret — the parties agreed to this to expedite a Supreme Court ruling — but under pressure from McCain-Feingold's defenders, parts have been made public. Every American should read what are known as the "Internal Political Party Documents" (they can be found at www.campaignlegalcenter.org, under the header BCRA/McCain—Feingold) and be prepared to be outraged if the court strikes down McCain-Feingold's modest attempts to fix our broken democracy.

On the surface, many of the documents summon up a world of wealthy bonhomie. "It was great seeing you in New York at the Plaza," the Republican National Committee finance chairman, Mel Sembler, tells Global Crossing's co-chairman, Lodwrick Cook. "I'm glad Kim's coming out to Aspen," Haley Barbour, who heads a group of the Republican Party's top donors, writes to Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management. But it doesn't take long to turn to business. Mr. Barbour tells Mr. Moore that a top party official "particularly appreciated picking your brain on the Mexican peso deal" and "literally passed on what he heard that day to [Senate majority leader Bob] Dole and [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich."

If anyone was wondering, the documents make clear that money buys access. At the bottom of a typewritten letter thanking Phil Anschutz, the billionaire businessman, for a $100,000 contribution, Mr. Nicholson scrawls: "I hope your meeting with Trent Lott was productive. Thanks Phil!" On a Democratic call list is a note to ask Denise Rich, whose ex-husband would later be pardoned by President Bill Clinton, "to give 80K more this year for lunch with" the president.

And access gets results, as the contributors are the first to admit. "Many thanks for putting me in touch with Governor Ryan of Illinois," Mr. Cook of Global Crossing writes Mr. Nicholson. "He was very receptive to my request to move things along in terms of our issues with that state." The Edison Electric Institute's vice president reports back on a successful dinner the Republican Party set up with a key congressman and his wife, saying "We could not have asked for more."

And favorable government action, the documents assume, should be paid for. A Democratic call sheet advises asking Panhandle Eastern for $10,000 and notes that its vice chairman met with President Clinton about deepwater drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, and that the Clinton administration was "instrumental in getting this issue through Congress." A Republican call sheet says a retired chairman of Enron, who now wants to build an oil pipeline in the Arctic, "discussed the energy issue" and is sending $25,000.

Mr. Sembler's chatty note to Mr. Cook was a reminder that he had agreed to increase his donation from $100,000 to $250,000 when a pending merger went through. "Thankfully this has now been approved," the R.N.C. finance chairman writes, "so I am taking the liberty of enclosing an invoice for the additional upgrade."

These documents support specific parts of the legal arguments by the McCain-Feingold law's defenders. Notably, they belie the claim that the political parties operate independent of federal candidates and officeholders, and therefore should not be regulated by federal law. They also offer a disturbing explanation for why certain issues, like Arctic drilling, won't go away on Capitol Hill, and others, like gun control, get so little traction. Most important, they show how large campaign contributions are rotting American democracy at its foundation.

If McCain-Feingold loses in the Supreme Court, it could be an epic defeat for efforts to clean up American government. When advocates of reform lost in Congress, they returned in the next session, and eventually they prevailed. But if the justices hold that the basic building blocks of campaign finance legislation violate the Constitution, as they might, it could wipe out any hope for reform for decades.

At oral argument last week, it seemed that the justices were sharply divided — and that, as is so often the case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may singlehandedly decide what kind of a nation we will be. When historians look back on the Rehnquist Court, they will no doubt begin with its decision in Bush v. Gore, stopping the vote-counting in a presidential election. That case was decided in the heated atmosphere of a crisis, but this one will not be.

If the same five justices who stopped the Florida count rule that even minimal, bipartisan campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, they will be writing their legacy — as the court that allowed American democracy to slip away.