To Accept or Not to Accept Public Financing

I have distressing news for you tonight.

Well, maybe it won't be news for most of you. I guess it really shouldn't be. But sometimes things just don't seem real until someone puts them into words.

The news is simply this: Remember the good old days? Well, they're gone. For good.

That's a general fact. In particular, I refer to the rules of engagement in presidential campaigns.

There was a time, believe it or not, when presidential candidates would take a few months off from campaigning in the summer, and the only times you'd hear from them would be a couple of weeks when the Democrats and Republicans held their conventions.

And, of course, there were the obligatory photo ops on the Fourth of July.

Well, this year's campaign for the Democratic nomination was longer than any such nominating campaign in our history, with caucuses and primaries going on from January 3 to June 3. Everyone had a chance to participate in the decision.

But now, instead of taking a breather, a summer vacation, Barack Obama and John McCain are swinging away at each other.

Far ahead of the traditional campaign kickoff on Labor Day weekend.

Well, we've got some serious problems so it would be a good idea for the candidates to discuss the issues as much as possible.

Ah, there's the rub.

If only the candidates would talk about the real issues.

McCain thinks he's talking about an issue when he accuses Obama of breaking a promise by deciding not to accept public financing.

"This election is about a lot of things, but it's also about trust," McCain said. "It's also about whether you can take people's word. ... He said he would stick to his agreement. He didn't."

Personally, I like the idea of public financing. It was a necessary reform after the excesses of Watergate. The intention is noble — to keep candidates honest. (That can be a dirty — downright filthy, in fact — job, at times, but, darn it, somebody's gotta do it.)

And it appears to me that Obama's campaign has been honest about financing. Some of the facts may not be quite the way they've been represented to the public, but the contributions that have been reported appear to be within the legal limits.

(It reminds me of a passage early in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," in which Huck, referring to Twain's earlier novel about Tom Sawyer, observes that "there was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.")

But Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org writes in Newsweek that Obama is guilty of "a large exaggeration and a lame excuse" when he says McCain and the Republicans "are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs."

Jackson writes that "donations from PACs and lobbyists make up less than 1.7% of McCain's total receipts, and they account for only about 1.1% of the RNC's receipts."

Jackson also observes that "the Democratic National Committee has historically been far more reliant on PAC and lobbyist money than the RNC. In 2004, PACs provided about 10% of the DNC's total fundraising and only about 1% of the RNC's total."

What McCain really doesn't like is how much money his opponent has raised. Who can blame him? At this point in the campaign, the Democrat has a rare, almost unheard of, advantage in funds over the Republican.

In fact, Reuters is reporting that Obama raised nearly $22 million in May. (By the way, Reuters says McCain's campaign reported raising nearly as much as Obama — about $400,000 less than Obama — in May.)

McCain will need some creative advice to get the most bang for his bucks, and Republican advisers don't have much experience in that regard.

Well, deception seems to work.

And both sides appear to be more interested in scoring political points than doing or saying the right things.

McCain tries to make Obama's decision sound sinister, and Obama overstates the influence of PAC and lobbyist money on the Republicans.

Welcome to the brave new world of presidential politics.