Public financing system for Presidential campaigns is a joke

The McCain campaign has made much hay out of the fact that Barack Obama chose not to stick with his original plan of taking public financing for the general election. The McCain campaign did take the $85 million in taxpayer money, which prohibited them from spending any more than that on the general election campaign. Obama did not and as has been widely reported, has raised far more money than that.

What's not mentioned as often is that both party's national committees can continue to raise money and spend as much as they want on behalf of their candidates. Moreover, and this one surprised me, they are apparently not limited to the $2,300 donations per person that the candidate's on campaigns are. So you can give $2,300 maximum to the McCain or Obama campaign, but you can dump far more into the coffers of the DNC or RNC if you so wish.

While Obama continues to finance his campaign primarily through small donations from what's now over three million different people, the McCain campaign is relying heavily on RNC money and they are getting it from... you guessed it, the wealthy few. In mid October the RNC held a fundraiser in NYC that brought in $10.6 million in a single night. More than 1,000 people paid $1,000 each for tickets to the main fund-raiser. Nearly 250 people who contributed $25,000 got dinner beforehand with Mr. McCain.

As of October 15th, the RNC and McCain campaign combined had $84 million, $20 million more than the DNC and Obama combined, and yes, the RNC spends a great deal of that money on supporting McCain.

So the ideas that public financing severely limits a party's Presidential campaign and that it prevents the negative influence of campaigns being financed by big donors are both utter bullshit.