Some thoughts on the article in today's NYT about the McCain/Obama public financing question.

First, you can obviously understand Obama's reticence in signing up for public matching funds during the general election because he's raised about a gazillion dollars. So has Clinton for that matter.

As for Obama's claim that he has created a parallel public financing system, that's kind of a stretch. The idea of public financing is to create a SYSTEM that builds in incentives for candidates to raise money from lots of small contributions, like Obama has, by matching small donations with, say, a 3-1 match.

As for McCain, his campaign takes delight in blasting Obama for hinting that he is not taking public financing even though he said he would. But if you read the rest of the article, McCain's people say he is not committed to it either. He may not have said explicitly that he would take public financing during the general election, but one would certainly hope that he would considering how much mileage he is getting out of his self-styled identity as a reformer (aka maverick).