Two years ago, the Ohio Republican Party was embarrassed by revelations that it was selling access to Gov. Bob Taft in return for $25,000 and $50,000 annual contributions to the party's operating fund.

There was nothing illegal about the GOP's offer to generous contributors, but it smelled bad, coming after revelations that President Bill Clinton had been auctioning off nights in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House to his most generous campaign contributors.

In the case of Taft, neither the names of the contributors nor the amounts they gave were subject to public disclosure or to contribution limits, because the money was intended to pay for the GOP's operating costs, not handed out directly to Republican election candidates.

When the contributions became public knowledge, Taft promised to end the practice, and he and several other Republican leaders said they would support a rewrite of state election law that would require political parties to disclose contributions to their operating funds.

But two years later, nothing has changed, and the GOP is blushing over a similar embarrassment involving State Treasurer Joseph T. Deters. A number of securities brokers who do millions of dollars of business with the treasurer's office last year made large donations to the Hamilton County Republican Party, which, in turn, gave $302,000 to Deters' campaign committee.

Again, there so far is no indication of anything illegal, but the aroma is unappealing.

In a legal environment in which some political donations are limited and subject to disclosure while others are not, suspicions naturally will arise that political parties are gaming the system, finding ways to shift the undisclosed contributions into direct electioneering, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of campaign- finance rules.

Those rules are intended to make political financing transparent to the public, to make corruption more difficult and to allow voters to see who is trying to influence candidates.

The Dispatch long has advocated that the best approach to campaign financing is to allow unlimited contributions, coupled with full disclosure. There should be no artificial distinctions, such as "hard'' and "soft'' money. There should be no undisclosed political contributions, whether they are made to a party operating fund or to a candidate fund.

Any money spent to support a party or a candidate is intended to influence the political process. For that reason, it all should be disclosed. For that reason, the state campaign-finance law should be revised.