Lost in the noise of the presidential campaign is some good news: The demise of the public financing system for presidential elections, which was devised after Watergate, and the rise of small donor democracy via the Internet. Senator Obama's fundraising victory over Senator McCain renews the forty-year old effort to directly involve the public in the financing of presidential campaigns.
From Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff comes an idea for another innovation that financially rewards candidates who generate greatest popular interest, the public financing of presidential campaigns through a share of television advertising proceeds during the national political conventions.
Tapping public control of the airwaves to promote public attention to political speech is not a new idea. The innovation of Ayres and Nalebuff is to focus their proposal on two of the moments in American political life when the most Americans are paying attention.
A positive dynamic between popular attention to poltics and popular financing for politics is a new and praiseworthy attribute of the Internet. Ayres and Nalebuff are on the right track in trying to find a way to bring that dynamic to television.
-- Bill Crobett
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