Thursday, June 19, 2008

No Public Financing

Obama's opting out officially, sez CNN.

Good. I've long been somewhat wary of public financing in general terms. It was a solution to a problem, but not the only one, not necessarily the best one, and definitely not a solution immune from exploitation such that it could eventually become part of the problem itself. That is, something incumbents could manipulate to their own advantage in various ways. Details matter.

Obama found another solution to the problem, demonstrating that it is possible to raise immense amounts of money from small (and larger, too, of course) donors. It's now part of what presidential candidates will have to figure out how to do to win, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was never money in politics, it was the concentration of big money.