As I speculated a few weeks ago, John McCain has followed Barack Obama's lead on campaign financing by pledging to accept public funding in the general should his opponent do the same.

And while it's looking less likely that McCain has it locked than it did a few weeks ago, this is good few a number of reasons. The first is pretty obvious: the projected spend on the 2008 election should convince everyone that public funding is the way to go. If the costs of running continue to escalate at the rate they have, those of us who aren't CEO's should forget about representation in Washington. The second is for Obama supporters: Can Obama lead? Yes he can, by example. Now that there's bipartisan support for what Obama's done, I think Hillary, Edwards, Giuliani, and Romney are going to have to agree. After all, who wants to be the last of the potential nominees to get on the right side of an issue with so much public support? And the third good thing about this is for McCain supporters, though I'm not sure there are many reading this: Could this be the first step in McCain trying to reclaim the maverick outsider status he enjoyed the first time he ran?

Analogcabin @ 9:35 AM
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