Public-financing dilemma

Washington Post: You know there’s something terribly wrong with the public financing system for presidential campaigns when candidates turn to it only out of desperation and find themselves at a significant strategic disadvantage by taking public funds. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards once said he would skip the opportunity to collect matching funds for the primaries in order to compete on the same unlimited playing field as fellow Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. On Thursday, Edwards, appearing to make a virtue out of necessity, said that he was making the move to “step up” on the issue because “Washington is awash with money, and the system is corrupt.”

It’s hard to believe that Edwards would be stepping up to take the public funds if he were awash with the $60 million or so that Clinton and Obama collected in the first half of the year. Edwards raised $23 million, which would have been an impressive sum in previous cycles but seems paltry this time around. That has prompted Edwards to say he will take the matching funds — a move that will provide a needed infusion of cash when the money becomes available in January. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, in even worse financial straits, is also poised to take the matching funds.

The catch with public financing — in which candidates receive federal matching funds for the first $250 of every donation they collect — is twofold: First, candidates who take the money are constrained by ridiculously low limits on what they are permitted to spend in individual states. In Iowa, for example, where unfettered candidates could end up spending $15 million or more, the official limit is $1.5 million. Second, candidates who stay within the system are limited in their overall spending on primaries — and because the official primary season stretches all the way until the national conventions, a candidate who took public financing and managed to win the nomination would be hamstrung against a nominee of the opposite party who had no spending limits.

The bright side of the moves by Edwards and McCain is that they put a spotlight on an outmoded system and may help spur the legislative fix that is needed — not in time for this election, but for 2012. The state-by-state limits need to be junked. The primary spending cap — about $50 million this election — needs to be raised dramatically to accommodate the reality of expensive modern primary campaigns. The matching-funds system needs to be overhauled to make more money available, preferably by providing a multiple match — perhaps 4 to 1 — for the first few hundred dollars collected. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., has introduced such a measure, with Obama as a co-sponsor. Clinton hasn’t signed on, but she told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News last week that “at the end of the day, we should be moving toward public financing.” If nothing else, the spectacle of the 2008 money chase and Edwards’s plight ought to help make that happen.