Mccain's Socialist Campaign

[Malerin]

What could be more socialist than having the government GIVE you 84 million to run your campaign? Mccain is a govt. funded candidate. Obama's campaign is being financed by millions of small donors. Who's the real maverick here?

[bozothedeathmachine]

I think that's nitpicking. McCain is, or at least used to be, about campaign finance reform, which is fine by me. In previous elections, there was the possibitility of candidacy by attrition. Whoever had enough money to stay in it longest had a better shot.

Obama has pretty much redefined that in that most of his money are in the form of constant small donations from all over the electoral map. This phenomenon doesn't really change my views unless it starts becoming the norm. IE Campaign finanace reform and The Obama MethodTM aren't mutually exclusive....yet.

[Puppycow]

Um, too much spin.

The idea (in theory) is that if the government finances the campaign, the candidate will be less beholden to special interests.

[Random]

Yeah, it can get a bit akward. Remember after the Gingrich revolution in 94? The GOP printed up a menu of the representatives you could "talk" to for various levels of contributions.

Frankly, I would just ditch private funding altogether and make all federal elections publicly funded. It would be surprisingly affordable, since we could require television and radio stations to provide free air time to qualifying political parties, which is where the bulk of the money gets spent. You could probably do it for $50-60 million total for all presidential and congressional runs.