Presidential fundraising for 2008 begins at a breathtaking pace. How to apply the brakes?
Washington Post, Thursday, April 5, 2007; A16
NOW THAT first-quarter presidential fundraising is done and the staggering totals have been tallied, two groups of people ought to be asking questions about the implications of this insatiable money chase.
The first are the 2008 presidential candidates, and the question they should ponder is: Do we really want to keep doing this?
Any credible candidate must devote an inordinate amount of effort to raising money to fuel a primary campaign. But there is some hope that this fundraising madness could be put aside for the general election portion of the campaign, if both major-party nominees agree to forswear private funds for the general election and make do with the $85 million in public money that would be available to each.
One of the leading candidates in each party -- Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), whose request to the Federal Election Commission opened the door to this solution, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- has already agreed to accept the public financing and live within the general election limits if his opponent were to do the same. It's time for the other leading contenders to make clear their intentions. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has said only that she will "consider" taking the public financing. The campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani say those candidates haven't yet decided; we didn't get a response from the campaign of Democrat John Edwards.
It would be in the interests of the candidates and the public for all the candidates to agree to accept federal funds for the general election, as every candidate has done since the adoption of the post-Watergate presidential financing system. The candidates would spare themselves the slog of additional fundraising without putting themselves at a strategic disadvantage; in the current political climate, it's not clear which major-party nominee could rake in more. And the public would benefit from having general election candidates less preoccupied with racing from fundraiser to fundraiser, not to mention less beholden to big financiers.
The others who should be asking questions about this broken process are voters themselves. Their first query should be addressed to the 2008 candidates who haven't yet pledged to take public funds if possible: Why not? In addition, they should ask of candidates who profess to believe in the public financing system: Why not do what you can to salvage at least part of it?
But a more important question is whether it's possible to fix this mess -- not this time around but in time for 2012. That would require major changes in the system, including coming up with spending limits for the primaries that are more realistic than the current obsolete amounts and increasing the amount of public money available. The alternative is a system in which candidates without the ability to raise enormous sums never get a chance to have their messages heard; in which candidates are increasingly beholden to well-connected financiers; and in which the quest for cash crowds out campaigning. In short, it is the current system, unpleasant for candidates and unhealthy for democracy.