I like the idea of publicly funded campaigns. It puts every candidate on a level playing field financially speaking and forces them to address the issues. None of them will be able to buy more air time or fire off more nasty memos than their opponents. The only serious contention I have is that we'd be paying for them. All of them. And with the sheer volume of elected officials in this country, we're talkig about thousands of campaigns each election cycle. That's a lot of money. Where would it come from? Or would we limit the public funding to national offices?

I've heard a lot of people defend campaign contributions as an exercise of free speech, but I call shennanigans on that. Money does not equal speech. Anyone is free to make their own posters or call their favorite radio shows or in any other way publicly and vocally promote their favorite candidate (or rail against his/her opponents). But giving money to that candidate is a sketchy thing. It implies that they now owe you a favor in return, especially if you donate a lot of money. And having a representative who owes favors to wealthy organizations is probably not in the best interests of their constituents.