A lot of us are waiting to hear what Mark Green has to say for himself in the scandals swirling around the Brooklyn Democratic machine. It seems that the campaign of the man who wrote “Selling Out,” a book about the evils of money in politics, made a $245,000 payment to the political club controlled by the county’s Democratic Party boss, Clarence Norman. The payment was negotiated right after Mr. Norman agreed to endorse Mr. Green in his runoff election with Fernando Ferrer.

“The scandal of string-attached money corrupting politics and government is the most urgent problem in America today — because it makes it harder to solve nearly all our other problems,” Mr. Green wrote in his book, published in 2002. While we disagree with the sentiment — money donated to a candidate to run for office, or spent on a candidate’s behalf, ought to be viewed as a form of speech — Mr. Green presumably does believe his own rhetoric. So, how does that square with money flowing in the opposite direction, toward the person doing the endorsing? This may not be illegal, though our Jack Newfield and Colin Miner reported yesterday that the Brooklyn D.A. at least wants to ask Mr. Green some questions. The erstwhile candidate certainly has clammed up when approached by the simple press.

The probe now going on into Brooklyn politics is enough to make one think more warmly of the idea of opening up, campaign finance system altogether, so that candidates unable to finance themselves and unwilling to deal with the local machine can organize their own groups of backers. In such a system, it would be easier to run from outside of the clubhouses. “When our campaign sent in our final filings after the election, mine included 14,000 contributor names,” Mr. Green writes in praise of himself in his book. “Bloomberg’s contained only one — his own.” Who, in the end, is the man less connected to special interests?