The consequences of presidential campaign fund raising run amuck are claiming a once-unlikely victim in Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
His failed effort to be competitive in the money chase has reduced him from early status as his party?s front-runner for 2008 to the ranks of so-called second-tier candidates hoping for lightning somehow to strike them.
Because McCain?s campaign has burned through $24 million so early, leaving only $2 million in the bank amid disappointing second-quarter fund raising, he has to consider accepting the federal campaign subsidy that the leading fund raising Republican candidates are rejecting, but the second-tier types realistically must depend upon.
Poor decisions on spending obviously were a factor in McCain?s woes. They apparently were driven by a strategy of trying to create an inevitability in his nomination in the face of questions about his age, health and commitment to Republican positions.
There may also have been unrealistic expectations of his appeal as a maverick who could tap into independent voters and Democrats as well as moderate Republicans, as demonstrated briefly in his 2000 race against George W. Bush.
In 2000, McCain handed Bush a sound defeat in the New Hampshire primary by putting his own political independence repeatedly on display in retail, town-meeting campaigning. But his image as less than knee-jerk dependable on conservative party issues was his undoing in later state primaries in which only Republicans could vote.
This time around, McCain?s early courtship of the orthodox Republican conservative base seems to have eroded his appeal among those same independents and Democrats. Many of them viewed his repositioning as contrary to what was most attractive to them ? his maverick behavior.
Also, while McCain?s support of the war in Iraq may have buttressed his standing with conservative Republicans, his continued running against the GOP grain on such issues as immigration and campaign finance reform has reminded many of them why they have never trusted him.
So, in addition to slashing an overblown campaign staff and dumping some key longtime political advisers like the smart but sometimes combustible John Weaver, McCain must now look to Uncle Sam for enough money to stay in the race.
With the candidates leading in the polls still hell-bent on raising as many millions as they can in the hope of burying all opponents, McCain appears to have no choice but to take the federal subsidy. He will need it just to compete in the first January contests in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
The campaign finance law written in the wake of the Watergate scandal provides federal matching money for contributions raised in amounts of $250 or less, to encourage small donors, provided the recipient candidate accepts federal limits on spending in each state.
While the subsidy is not much, most of the second-tier candidates, now including McCain, are likely to grab it and hope a surpriseshowing in those first states will boost their fund raising and garner plenty of free television time thereafter.
Even in the event fortune does somehow shine on McCain and any of the others trailing badly in the money chase, the specter looms in early February of 20 or more primaries and caucuses, especially in megastates such as California, New York and Illinois. It may take a political miracle to get over that mountain for candidates relying on the matching funds.
Money has always been, as old California political boss Jesse Unruh famously said, “the mother?s milk of politics.” But the surge in its quest in the last seven years, since Bush first opted out of the subsidy system in 2000, has been astonishing. In 2004, he chose again to reject the federal money and Democrats Howard Dean and John Kerry followed suit, leading to the expectation that no future candidates would resist reaching for the sky as the limit in fund raising.
McCain?s misfortune, however,
has demonstrated that the taxpayer-supported campaign subsidy will still be of some use as a life-preserver to candidates who have not been able to play with the big-money boys.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
