Taking public financing, and having 3 extra weeks with the same amount of money as George Bush whose convention was later, probably cost John Kerry the '04 election as it was one of the central reasons his campaign did not respond vigorously to the Swiftboating that was funded by T. Boone Pickens and a group of wealthy Republican donors in a 527, supposedly "outside" the Bush campaign. This group ran $38 million of scurrilous ads impugning Senator Kerry's heroism in favor of their candidate who checked the "no" box when asked if he would volunteer for overseas duty. I was at ground zero, Cayahoga County,Ohio, for the last week of the election, and the SwiftBoat ads ran dawn to dusk nonstop during that period.
John McCain is taunting Barack Obama to agree, now, to take public financing for the general election and eschew private funding. We know already that "FreedomWatch", a rightwing 527 managed by former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, is raising money to launch its attack on whomever the Democrats nominate. And, they will raise much more than $38 million.
The Republicans cannot win an election without personal, scurrilous attacks on their opponents. With all of the missteps of the '04 Kerry campaign, John Kerry came close to winning against a sitting wartime President, and would have certainly won had it been just his campaign vs. Bush's without the 527s.
The Bush campaign in 2000 even did it in the primaries to John McCain himself, questioning his patriotism while imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam on behalf of their guy who joined the Air National Guard and became the only pilot in history to surrender his pilot's license voluntarily, and not to take an ordered physicial because he decided he did not need to follow regulations, and got away with it. For good measure they accused McCain of fathering an illegitimate black baby.
That history might suggest that McCain would agree not to have 527 organizations participate in the campaign. No candidate, however, has that power and authority. Moreover, there is no evidence that the McCain running for President is the McCain of old. Indeed, the evidence is to the contrary.
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, the money will flow into FreedomWatch and a series of 527s, probably funded by more-or-less the same people, to reprise the 1990s attacks on the Clintons, with additional nonsense and filth added to bring them "up to date". She cannot afford to take public money only.
Neither can Barack Obama. People Barack never knew or met will suddenly appear and claim intimate knowledge of some aspect of his life. His capacity to realign national political constituencies into a new majority---eg., that uses free markets but does not worship them as religion---poses an existential threat to the entire radical rightwing mythology. They will come after him with everything they can with absolutely no regard for the truth.
The nominee of the Democratic Party will be chosen by the delegates at the convention. Right now, these are mere numbers. When the convention convenes, these numbers will be real people. Those people represent the voters of the party in the same way that a Board of Directors represents shareholders of a company. One of the Board's duties is to select a President who then asks the Board approve his slate of officers. The Board has the responsibility to vet those choices, but rarely imposes anyone on the President because the personal chemistry has to be there for a management team to be successful. Similarly, the convention will select a Presidential candidate who will then ask the convention to approve his choice for Vice President.
The Board of a company also approves its annual budget and overall business strategy. It is up to the Board to determine sources of funding (sell stock, take loans, etc.) and the level of expenditure. It would be altogether fitting and proper, therefore, for the "Board", i.e., the delegates to the convention, to decide whether the people it has selected and approved to run as President and Vice-President should budget public funding or private. By the time of the convention, they will, among other things, have observed the activities of the rightwing Republican 527s for 5 months, not that that will provide comfort that they will be silent during the fall. The delegates can decide whether their candidates, in whom they have invested their trust for winning the general election, can risk being Swiftboated without adequate campaign funds to fight back. I
The Democrats should tell McCain that the decision for public or private financing will be left to the convention. That takes it off the table until then. McCain can find out their decision by tuning in. He may even learn something about democracy.