| The public financing system involves an offer of public funds in exchange for obeying a private funding spending limit: Under the federal presidential financing system, a candidate this year would be given $84.1 million from the Treasury to finance a general election campaign. In exchange, the candidate is barred from accepting private donations, or from spending more than the $84.1 million. This morning, as expected, Obama left the public financing system, forgoing those $84.1 million in public funds --- knowing that he can raise significantly more in online donations. Obama is now "the first candidate of a major party to decline public financing — and the spending limits that go with it — since the system was created in 1976, after the Watergate scandals." It is a historic move, although it should be said that it had long since become commonplace for nearly all candidates of both parties to decline public funds (and spending limits) during the primaries. If McCain follows suit, then the 2008 general election will be the first in over twenty years not to be bound by spending limits --- and each candidate will be able to raise and spend unlimited private funds. The problem is that these "spending limits" were never absolute. The RNC and DNC have long conducted their own fundraising and spending, bound by a different and much higher personal contribution limit. And 527's have now made it commonplace for outside groups to spend massive amounts in the final weeks of the campaign. In other words, Obama would have been at a significant disadvantage in the general election, the historic disadvantage of Democrats nationally for years in fundraising --- since he would have been unable to maximize his new model of online fundraising, while his opponents would have been free to raise and spend without being bound by contribution limits. And in a real sense, Obama's is the more public financing model, based on the active choice and mobilization of millions of Americans giving small sums, instead of the passive allocation of tax funds by a bureaucracy or the barely restrained spending of an oligarchy. Still, public financing advocates are almost sure to be upset --- and rightfully so --- at what could be the final collapse of a system, but it's not Barack Obama they should be upset with. Public financing regulations haven't kept pace by raising spending limits or further restricting 527's, and until they do, they only leave Democrats at an extreme disadvantage. Let's remember what public financing was for: To ensure that the voices of the public are heard over the unrestrained spending of the special interests. An unreformed public financing system no longer meets this challenge and indeed perversely maintains the inequity. Instead, the internet holds the future of an engaged public, rising up as they have, on their own, to fund the campaigns and make irrelevant the special interests. It's a welcome development. |
