Except that he has no nonvexatious argument for asking the FEC to conclude he did not violate the law. You don’t get an exception from the requirements of the law simply by asking nicely.

No sympathy for McCain, these are HIS restrictions.
This is the crap he sposored and passed and thought was a great idea. Let him SUFFER.

As J. Geils would say

Serve you right to suffer, babe, serve you right.

The rules are pretty clear. He applied for the funds, and was told he was eligible. He *used* those funds. That he didn’t spend them isn’t relevant; he still gained value from them, as a loan guarantee. At that point, it seems pretty clear that he was committed to accepting them, and the restrictions that come with them.

And even more clearly, if Maverick McCain, the presumptive GOP candidate for president, really truly wanted his republican colleagues in the senate to stop blocking the FEC from having a quorum, he’d be twisting arms in public and private to have separate votes for the four nominees. The fact that he hasn’t said word one about that issue makes it clear he’s perfectly happy with matters as they stand.

Except that it’s illegal for him to use the public funds as collateral for other loans. It’s like arguing that it’s weak that someone gets charged with armed robbery just because s/he has a knife instead of a gun.

His fundraising *depends* on breaking the law.

Just like his Presidency would do.

The deliciousness goes to 11!

This is a magical golden diamond of happenstance to smack the man. Chisel the track and hammer down, hammer down, hammer down for freedom.

It still doesn’t seem like McCain is exactly in a fair situation here: McCain is required to get approval even though the FEC is disabled, but since the FEC is disabled he can’t get approval. This is a Kafkaesque punishment for accepting public financing, even if (as the FEC may eventually rule McCain did with the loan thing) McCain entered into the public financing system in bad faith. The possibility of winding up in such a Kafkaesque situation may dissuade people from utilizing public financing systems in future, which from a progressive perspective is a very bad thing.

On the other hand, it’s interesting in that it’s a little hard to feel sympathy for McCain given he is, you know, a U.S. Senator, and the presumptive nominee of the party of the sitting President, who has endorsed him. In other words McCain is one of the very few people in the entire world who is currently in a position to fix the disabled FEC problem! McCain is legitimately in a position where he could personally negotiate an end to the gridlock preventing Congress and the President from bringing the FEC back online. As far as I know, he’s not made an effort to do so; instead he just plunged ahead with his financing plan despite the warnings.

So we have someone who doesn’t like the law, but although they’re actually in a position to get the state of the law changed, they decide not to change it and instead just go ahead and break it. Sound familiar in recent politics?