Proponents of campaign finance ”reform” have pushed for years for full public financing of candidates. This is the only way, the true believers insist, that the public interest can be served and the special interests constrained. Well, consider public financing’s latest gift to politics: the unholy alliance of Patrick Buchanan and Lenora Fulani. Those two politicians, who have garnered almost no public support of late, may well be given a prominent platform next year, at taxpayer expense.

Mr. Buchanan was making little headway in the early running for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, and bolted to the Reform Party. Ms. Fulani and her strange brand of Marxist populism have been on the fringes of American politics for years. But she is a good organizer, and in 1988 she managed to get on the ballot in all 50 states.

So he has the national profile she needs to help promote her views, and she has the foot soldiers and the experience to help get the Reform Party on the ballot in the 29 states plus the District of Columbia where it does not have automatic ballot access.

Still, the main reason the Buchanan-Fulani alliance makes any sense at all is the $13 million pot of public money that will go to the Reform Party’s nominee. With that money and the Reform nomination, Mr. Buchanan could make a serious claim to participate in national presidential debates. At the very least, public financing lends legitimacy to any candidacy.

Those in Congress who championed the campaign ”reforms” of 1974 said they did so largely to shore up the two-party system: in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, elected officials of both parties feared that unregulated and unlimited private campaign financing would lead to the system’s breakdown. Paradoxically, Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani, who stand to gain so much from public financing, recently called for breaking the ”iron grip” of the two-party system.

What we are seeing is a classic problem in American politics: Measures enacted with the best of motives have produced results few predicted and even fewer would have wanted. The 1974 legislation failed to contemplate a self-financed campaign of the kind Ross Perot launched in 1992 — and the Reform Party, eligible for public money, that followed.

The lesson is not to tinker with the laws yet again, hoping that this time we’ll get it right. Rather, it’s to stop pretending we know how to ”get it right.” Those uncomfortable with the thought of underwriting the views of Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani should demand an end to the public support of any candidate. The system cannot be reformed. We need to return to truly free campaigns.