BRIDGE FINANCING THAT WENT BAD
A cusory read of McCain's implicit or contingent pledge of matching-assets (assets that he didn't have and subsequently reneged on wanting), brings to mind a variation of an old Wall Street saw:
He who pledges what isn't hisn'
Must buy it back
Or go to prison.
Is McCain a victim of circumstance, with a hobbled FEC the culprit?
REFUSAL OF DISBURSEMENT (BUT AFTER CERTIFICATION)
Who was the swell that divorced "certification" from "disbursement"? Isn't that what opened up the possibility of McCain's bridge (financing) to no where? Put another way, the "certification" is a call on taxpayers to finance ... the losers in a National Campaign, those who don't win enough to secure a private road of riches?
You make the call whether public financing of just the losers is a public benefit.
The WaPo says it isn't hypocritical. Well, why did a savvy political operator, like McCain, get involved with a system that is so obviously outdated? Seek a 'certification' that he would later protest was of no value to him?
If the system was broken (and woefully out of date with its dollar limits so low as to render one ultimately uncompetitive), as WaPo suggests, wouldn't someone with judgment not engage the public's system at all? Unless ... unless your intent was truly to derive some benefit, without adhering to the restrictions.
And THAT would be worse than hypocritical and truly a bridge to nowhere.
Even so, if an 'FEC certification', as currently construed, is really a government backstop for private financing - right, wrong, good or bad, then it would be silly not to use it as one. It would be shrewd.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
McCain's Bridge to Nowhere
