Money and the People’s Choices
A mind-boggling amount of money has already been spent on this year’s presidential election, and we haven’t even gotten to the conventions. The raising and doling out of lavish sums has been dispiriting to watch, a muddle of incompetence, avarice and special pleading, only vaguely restrained by the nation’s campaign finance laws. We sincerely hope that things improve before the general election onslaught.
Given this spectacle, it is discouraging to think that this year’s presidential candidates are vying to take control over the national purse strings.
Most worrisome may be the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which heaped $5 million on consultants last month. The campaign splurged on luxury hotel rooms and spent nearly $100,000 for pre-Iowa-caucus party platters.
Then there’s Senator John McCain’s quasi-farcical attempt to reverse his commitment to public financing for the primary season. Mr. McCain had grasped at public financing like a tax-subsidized life preserver last year when his campaign was foundering. Now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee and the donors have returned, he wants back into the world of deep-pocket financing so he can spend more freely up until the Republican convention in September.
. . . Congress could put the public financing system on firmer footing by updating campaign subsidies to meet inflation. The voters, for their part, should insist that the candidates accept public money and operate within the rules of the system.
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Interesting points;
- Clinton and McCain are both NYTimes choices for president
- The Times has quietly resisted this call to concern over the 'national purse-strings' through seven disastrous years
- On two year election cycles, the Times and its other newspaper holdings suck enough blood from candidate ads to weather the interim years of slack
- Let alone campaign finance, the Times and Sulzberger family have never used the paper to consistently promote good government, relying instead on the reporting of bad government.
* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Things That Make Me Nuts, check out Opinion-Columns.com
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