The $2,000 hot dog

Washington Post: President Bush says that "the political season will come in its own time," but the fund-raising season is already in full swing. Mr. Bush collected an astonishing $3.5 million at a reception here the other night; $2,000 got you the chance to eat hot dogs and nachos standing up in a hotel ballroom. That take, while probably a record, is apt to be eclipsed at a New York event this week. Overall, the president's team expects to vacuum up $20 million in the space of just a few weeks. To put that amount in perspective, consider that the president's nine Democratic rivals combined raised $25 million during the first three months of the year. Just a few years ago, $20 million was considered a daunting amount, and it was a test of a candidate's viability to try to collect that sum by Jan. 1 of the election year. For the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush, taking advantage of a doubling of the individual contribution limit from $1,000 to $2,000, expects to raise at least $170 million -- overtaking his record $100 million haul in 2000. And remember, that's for a primary "campaign" in which Mr. Bush is unopposed. His Democratic rivals, who don't have anything like the Bush fund-raising machine and therefore can't afford to give up federal matching funds, will be limited to raising about $46 million -- and they'll be lucky to get that much.
Out of kilter
All this is a symptom of a presidential campaign financing system that is dangerously out of whack. The system gives candidates the opportunity to collect matching funds (up to $250 for every contribution they raise) in return for abiding by spending limits in the primaries. Then, in the general election, each major-party candidate receives full public funding. But an increasingly front-loaded primary system and the rapidly rising costs of campaigns have made the primary spending limit unrealistically low. Meanwhile, although Congress increased the donation limit to $2,000, it kept the amount of each donation that can be matched at $250, limiting the value of matching funds. That gives candidates such as Mr. Bush an incentive to opt out of the system and places their rivals at an extreme disadvantage.
Two members of the Federal Election Commission, one Democrat and one Republican, have proposed changes that would help considerably. They would raise the primary spending limit to $75 million, double the amount that can be matched to $500 and raise the total public money primary candidates can get to about $37.5 million. "If major legislative changes are not made, I think the presidential funding program runs a serious risk of becoming irrelevant," said commissioner Michael E. Toner, who was the Bush campaign's lawyer in 2000. It's too late for the 2004 campaign, but Congress ought to turn its attention to this matter in time for 2008.