John McCain created and sponsored McCain-Feingold supposedly because he believed money contributions to political campaigns were a bad thing. Presumably it is a bad thing because of the belief that a lot of money can buy an election, can put a bad candidate into office.

Steven Levitt, writing in "Freakonomics," an interesting book about multivariate analysis of various social and political trends, suggests that the opposite is what really happens: The better, more popular candidate, the one likely to win, attracts the most money. McCain-Feingold's rationale may be 180 degrees from reality. If money buys an election, why did Mitt Romney, who had multi-millions to spend, never get a lot of political traction? Why did he drop out if money could buy an election?

If indeed the candidate most likely to win attracts the most money, what does that say about the Hillary-Obama race? Right now, his donations are pouring in while she has reportedly been forced to finance her own campaign with a 5 million dollar check. (Some have reported this is a Clinton trick to try to attract donors.) Hmmm...where does Hillary get 5 million spare dollars? They were just hidden under some mattress she turned over in Chappaqua? If Obama is attracting the most money, is he the one most likely to win? If I were Hillary, I'd be scared.

All of which, if McCain were a thoughtful, reasonable man, would lead him to campaign on a platform of repealing McCain-Feingold, which would go a long way toward winning back some conservative voters.