More politics talk.

[cyrano]

So I confess that, despite being a PoliSci major in college, there are trappings to the American Electoral System that I don't understand.

Barack Obama declined to participate in the federal public financing system during the primaries.
John McCain declined to participate in the federal public financing system during the primaries.
Barack Obama is declining to participate in the federal public financing system during the general election.
John McCain says that anybody who's not participating in public financing is obviously not fit for the office.

Are there any grounds to McCain's statements here? Is there a difference between primary campaigns and general election campaigns? Or is this just a politics thing where anything your opponent does just shows that he's an incompetent puppet of special interests?

Comments

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

McCain is trying to goad Obama into participating, not because there's any difference between campaigns, but because it would limit Obama severely.

Accepting public financing puts a cap on your spending. That's great if you wouldn't spend that much anyway, because it's free money. But in a presidential election, the cap is nowhere near what the candidates want to spend. McCain is participating because the cap for the general election is much higher than for the primaries, and no matter whether public funds are accepted, there's still a per-donor limit. McCain, like most politicians, has a small number of high-money donors, so accepting the free money and the constraints that come with it makes sense for him, because ultimately he gets more money and not-much-more limits.

Obama, however, has metric fuckton of small supporters. For him to take the public funds would be stupid, because if he's losing, all of those small donors are going to throw more (small amounts of) money at him, and it will all be bunched up at key moments-- but he won't be able to spend it all at once because of the limits imposed by the public financing system.

McCain would LOVE to see Obama use public funds and be subject to the spending limits. But if he can't have that (and since Obama is not an idiot, McCain can't have that), then it's just one low-cost way to start smearing Obama's name.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

From an article I read on Y!News this morning, it seems there may be some question of whether a candidate is allowed to NOT accept public funding. It's all very confusing.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I think basically what it comes down to is that our system is outdated and archaic and (most significantly) was invented before the Internet, which Senator Obama is so successfully utilizing. Fortunately, situations like this (and the Democratic primary, and the 2000 election) should at least get people of the next generation thinking about how maybe we should make some changes...