The news today brings word of two developments, one trumpeted in headlines and the other tucked quietly into government press notices.  Reported separately, they are better understood together, as signposts of the changed landscape of campaign finance reform.  A l970s reform—public financing of Presidential elections—was struck a hard blow by a major candidate’s decision to ‘opt out’ and finance privately.  David D. Kirkpatrick, "Death Knell May Be Near for Public Election Funds," New York Times (Jan. 23, 2007).  Dan Balz and Matthew Mosk, "Clinton Bid Heralds the Demise of Public Financing," Washington Post (Jan. 23, 2007) at A1.  A 21st century reform, McCain-Feingold, produced another increase in the individual contribution limits available to candidates and parties, now calibrated to movements in the consumer price index.    The old reform, perhaps staggering to its grave, had once stood for the proposition that the government might fund campaigns to encourage small donors and limit large donor influence.  Now, in the new reforms, large donors and the candidates they support have the government’s regularly scheduled assistance in making what is large still larger.

     Even John McCain suggests he may abandon public financing.  Not too long ago, he gave some hint of disaffection when he declined to join in pending Congressional efforts to revive, through various amendments, the attractiveness of the public check-off alternative.  He apparently believes that the system is beyond repair—or that any legislative improvement will come too late to be of any use to his candidacy.  With Hillary Clinton’s decision to collect general election contributions now, foregoing public money later, two major candidates, one from each party, are rendering a judgment from which the old Watergate reform may not recover.

     The largest problem facing faithful defenders of Presidential public funding is the diminished support offered by the public.  This is a political problem in two dimensions.  Inadequate public support is killing off the system, since it is in regular danger of insolvency, and this same lack of interest discourages any attempted rescue because voters aren’t calling for help and some—believing that this is "welfare for politicians"—may not react well to the attempt.  Candidates who have declined the public funds in the primaries pay little political price.  Things have gotten so bad that the only price paid is the one charged to candidates who accept the money and so suffer the perception that they are insufficiently "electable" or "serious."

     In many ways, McCain-Feingold is more down-to-earth, more practical, than its ancestral counterpart, the public financing system enacted over thirty years ago.  It ridded the system of one kind of money (soft money), but it was prepared to make up the difference in the "hard "kind, and one of its allures was the regular CPI increase in the contribution limits that it provided for.  Reformers and their chief Congressional allies often hail McCain-Feingold for replacing soft with hard money in the party network:  their point is that candidates can raise increasing sums of money under the changed rules and be not much worse off then under a more deregulated soft money system.  CPI increases are part of the bargain:  they shore up the reformed hard money regime—and the role of large donors in it—by accounting for inflation and avoiding too steep an erosion in the purchasing power of the campaign dollar.

     A reformer like John McCain is still participating in the regulatory "system," but it is the publicly funded system available for his Presidential candidacy.  A public funding system is full of risks, financial and political, whereas McCain Feingold keeps government in the game, but on less provocative terms, as the administrator of a mechanism to generate larger private donations.  The new reform also regulates spending against those same candidates by independent groups and by millionaires.  It is a private rather than a public spending system in which the rules are structured to the advantage of some but not others. 

    And so, for every reform, there is a season, and as of yesterday, the season had changed.

Bob Bauer