<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238&page=2>
"The public financing system for presidential campaigns, a post- Watergate initiative hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money, may have quietly died over the weekend," writes David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times keying off of Sen. Clinton's decision to not participate in the public financing system for either the nomination fight or the general election. LINK
Under the headline, "Clinton Bid Heralds Demise of Public Financing," the Washington Post Balz and Most describe the likely demised of the public financing system in 2008. LINK
[WS:] Which offers further evidence that the role of money in politics is almost exclusively a supply driven (rather than a demand driven) phenomenon.
In other words - any attempt to curb the demand for private money in politics is going to fail, as long as there is ample supply of it. Get rid of the surplus income, fabulous profits, etc. - say by confiscatory progressive taxation - and the reliance on private money in politics will go down significantly.
Of course this solution is unthinkable in the US today - so public financing is DOA for systemic reasons rather than character flaws of individual politicians.
Wojtek