Posted: 3/30/09

  
   It is not entirely clear what to make of John McCain's declaration that Presidential public financing is "dead".  He was speaking with The Washington Times, and it could be that he was taking the line popular with the audience of the moment. But, as so often, the pronouncement was as much personal as it was coldly tactical.  To the  cause of public financing reform, it was not helpful, and his analysis in all his gloominess on the subject was wrong.
 
   The personal dimension to the comment was the familiar one: he had decided to take public funding, lost the election, and therefore demonstrated for all time that public financing was a botched choice.  If it was mistake for John McCain to take it, then it would be mistake for all others, at all times, to do the same.  He says nothing about reform: about the structural problems with the system that even its proponents concede and have  proposed to fix. It did not work for him in 2008: end of a story. He showed, in the most personal of ways, that it is a foolish to accept the money. This is how he feels.

   On a less bitter note, in the video excerpt appearing with the Times story, McCain refers to the large sums of money that Presidential candidates can raise, and he takes this to mean that no publicly funded system will find its takers.  This is, plainly, far from the truth.  The attractiveness of a public funding option all depends: on the candidacy, on the competitive circumstances, and on the soundness of the public funding program.  One need look only as far as John McCain's Presidential primary campaigns in 2000 and 2008.  In 2000, he took public money for the primary; in 2008, his position shifted with his circumstances, ending with his decision to decline the funds.  His calculation was different for the general election.

   McCain believes now that he miscalculated.  Having put public funding into the same category with other disappointments of 2008--believing that it failed him--he has decided to report that it is dead forever. Others may conclude that campaign finance reform need not be tethered to John McCain's experiences or how he chooses to interpret them.

Bob Bauer