Public Financing

I'm not much of a "goo-goo," but I think it's hard to deny that our country would be much better served by a real system of public financing for campaigns. Along with reducing the power of big donors of the political system, a public financing situation would great mitigate the problem of uncompetitive elections. Gerrymandering has attracted a lot of indignation recently, and to some extent rightly, but realistically that's only a small piece of the puzzle. Any district of any shape or size has a median voter and it should be possible to run a competitive campaign in even a very conservative or a very liberal district. The problem, usually, is money -- there's only so much to go around, and it naturally tends to focus on a relatively small number of "winnable" seats. Public financing would guarantee that for every real candidate there was real money for a real campaign and incumbents everywhere would need to be on their toes.

That, of course, is exactly what incumbents don't like about public financing. I wish Zach Roth had been a bit clearer on that point in his otherwise excellent article on how public financing could really kill the GOP machine. To get it done, Democratic leaders would need to decide that they care more about the health of their political movement than they do about their personal job security, and that's naturally a hard sell. Meanwhile, the vague gesture in the direction of public financing that we already have -- the voluntary checkbox scheme for funding presidential elections -- is going deeper into collapse with every passing cycle.