More on the Death of Public Financing

David Weigel, writing at Reason online, says the public financing of presidential campaigns is in its death throes:

Public financing was never truly popular. Its support hovered in the mid-60s when it started; in polls taken since then it has tumbled into the 20s. Support wavered as fringe candidates like Lyndon LaRouche collected government money to run campaigns that had almost no grassroots support. It was wobbly enough in 2000 that George W. Bush could break the spending limit and experience no blowback stiffer than the wind from a few angry pundits. In February 2007, after Hillary Clinton ditched the system, Rasmussen Reports found 38 percent of voters would be more likely to vote for a candidate who turned down public financing, compared to 25 percent who would be less likely.(emphsis added)

That last result is telling. The American voter is getting more and more distrustful of a political campaign fueld by tax dollars. Part of the problem is just general distrust of publicly funded campaigns, but also the idea that someone's tax dollars, no matter how meager they may be, being used to fund speech they oppose simply galls people.

I say good riddance to publicly funded campaigns.