MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.(The Talk of the Town)(comparing the campaign funds of George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry)

One of the sillier interludes of the current campaign season--or seasons, since the damn thing is going to end up spreading across all four by the time it gets through with us--was the mini-flap over when John Kerry would "accept" the Democratic nomination for President. The flap began on Friday, May 21st, when the Associated Press moved a story saying that the Kerry campaign was considering having its candidate delay his "acceptance" until September 1st, the day before President Bush "accepts" his renomination as the Republican candidate, at his party's Convention, here in New York. The Democratic Convention would still come off as scheduled, in Boston, during the last week in July, and there would still be nominating speeches and floor demonstrations and funny hats, and Senator Kerry would still deliver the traditional climactic address. But, in some formal, technical, strictly legal sense, the nomination would just sort of sit there for the next five weeks, at which point, in some similarly formal, technical, strictly legal sense, Kerry would "accept" it--perhaps by telephone. Or maybe via e-mail.

The reason that the idea of this Kabuki dance was entertained is an anomaly in the otherwise excellent public-finance provision of the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act, under which each of the major candidates for President is given a check, financed by citizens who have ticked off boxes on their income-tax returns, with which to conduct his general-election campaign. This year, the checks will be for a tad under seventy-five million dollars apiece--$74.69 million, to be exact. Each candidate gets his check either on September 1st or when he accepts his party's nomination, whichever comes first. After that, that's it--he can no longer raise or spend any other money.

The result, this year, will be a significant advantage for Bush. His public money has to last him for only sixty-three days, so he can spend it at an average daily rate of $1.2 million. Kerry, on the other hand, has to make his last for ninety-six days, so he'll be able to spend only around $800,000 a day. To make matters worse for Kerry, all through August he will be hoarding his skinny federal wad for later use, while Bush can go on raising and spending unlimited piles of private cash. When you consider that during March, eight months before the election, the Bush campaign spent fifty million dollars, or $1.6 million a day, on television ads alone--well, you can see why Kerry might be a little concerned.

The Kerry people say they didn't put forth the delay-the-acceptance idea as a trial balloon; it leaked out the old-fashioned way, by accident. Whatever kind of balloon it was, though, it turned to lead before it got airborne. It came under immediate and sustained attack on the weekend political chat shows. "What's going on is money, money, money," the dean of Washington political reporters, David S. Broder, of the Washington Post, said on "Meet the Press." "I have to say that we used to blame Republicans as being the party where money really drove everything. It's the Democrats that are allowing money to drive everything."

That was a little harsh, given that, as of the day Broder spoke, the Bush campaign had raised some $201 million (versus Kerry's $117 million), given that three-fifths of Bush's money comes from big donors who "max out" at two thousand dollars (versus two-fifths of Kerry's), and given how closely the fiscal, ...