This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, February 29, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

John McCain is mired in a system that he wants championed, public financing for a presidential

race.

What may emerge from this quandary for McCain is a troubling revelation about public financing

in general.

According to John Samples, the director of Cato's Center for Representative

Government, public financing of the presidential race is a mess. mrs. McCain last year when his campaign was in difficult straight he went forward to try to get public financing to keep the

campaign alive. And then as time passed he unexpectedly did better than he thought he would. He won New Hampshire and now looks

like he's going to be the nominee of the Republican Party. And the problem with that is he's in the he has made himself eligible for the public

financing system but he wants out of it and he wants out of it because he needs to spend money from

now until a Republican convention when he would get more public money and the

problem with the public financing system from his point of view is it comes with spending limits.

He could only spend $54 million in the whole primary period.

He's already spent something around 50 million.

So if he doesn't get out of the system,

he's only going to be able to spend around $4 million

between now and late summer.

And the result of that would be that he would not have any his campaign would not have

any way except four million dollars to effectively stay in the race during that period.

So unless he gets out of public financing, he's going to have $4 million to go up against the Democratic candidates who will have,

will spend tens of millions of dollars at least during that period.

It seems that this situation has not created any better politics as supporters of that type of system would have predicted.

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