April 10, 2011 5:10PM # John McCain: Citizens Shouldn’t Interfere in Politics By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Campaign finance “reform” advocates like Sen. John McCain are often heard to complain that official candidates’ ads can get lost in the clutter of ads from independent groups — as if the election belonged to the candidates, not the people. Now McCain has taken this theme a step further: He doesn’t like think tanks interfering in politicians’ decisions. George Will [reports from Phoenix](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-arizona-citys-sports-mania-encounters-a-hard-check/2011/04/08/AF5vCz3C_story.html) on the Goldwater Institute’s criticism of a $197 million municipal subsidy to a businessman in the National Hockey League: > John McCain, who holds the Senate seat once occupied by Barry Goldwater but does not hold Goldwater’s views about governmental minimalism, calls the institute’s actions “disgraceful” and “basically blackmailing”: “It’s not their role to decide whether the Coyotes should stay \[here\] or not.” Well. > > > Constitutions do not impress the co-author of the McCain-Feingold assault on the First Amendment (his law restricts political speech). But the institute’s job — actually, it is every Arizonan’s job — is to protect the public interest. A virtuoso of indignation, McCain is scandalized that the institute, “a non-elected organization,” is going to cause the loss of “a thousand jobs.” McCain’s jobs number is preposterous, as is his intimation — he has been in elective office for 28 years — that non-elected people should not intervene in civic life. > > > NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman agrees with McCain that the world is out of joint when people can second-guess the political class: “It fascinates me that whoever is running the Goldwater Institute can substitute their judgment for that of the Glendale City Council.” He will learn not to provoke \[former Cato policy analyst Darcy Olsen, now president of the Goldwater Institute\], who says, “It happens to fascinate me greatly that the commissioner thinks a handful of politicians can substitute their judgment for the rule of law.” ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).