Obama and Public Financing
The Obama campaign came out publicly and announced what we all knew was inevitable–that the campaign would forego public financing, the first major-party campaign in more than a generation to do so.
This only makes good, hard sense for the Obama campaign; they would have been stupid not to. Opting for public financing would not have made his campaign cleaner–it only would have hobbled his ability to raise money which is more honest than most of the lobbyist cash McCain self-righteously spends. Naturally, the McCain campaign and the GOP wasted zero time in falling all over this, blasting Obama for reneging on his promise to “aggressively pursue negotiations” with McCain on public financing. But as flip-flops go, this is an above-board one: in principle, Obama was pledging to take a clean route to campaign finance–and if anything, the route he has now chosen is even cleaner than the one he had pledged to take before. One has no doubts whatsoever that if it were McCain, he would have jumped at this too–except that McCain can’t raise the small, personal donations like Obama can.
Obama did a good job of neutralizing the worst that McCain and the GOP will try to smear him with: the idea that not opting for public financing is somehow corrupting. Obama pointed out that the public financing system is corrupt in itself: “the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” he announced in a statement today. Obama complained that McCain had already started to spend private funds, that his campaign is fueled by PACs funded by lobbyists, and that Republican 527 groups have already started to spend the huge sums of private cash that will support McCain from outside the public financing system.
Obama didn’t even mention specifically (and don’t count on the press doing it themselves) that McCain had already violated FEC regulations by withdrawing from public financing himself after having used public funds as collateral for a loan, not to mention that he needed FEC approval to pull out in the first place; McCain is already gaming the system with every dollar he spends from now up to the GOP convention.
Nor did Obama point out that McCain’s campaign is swarming with lobbyists, that despite the senator’s claim to being a finance-reform champion, he has been in bed with the corrupt money system in D.C. since he first entered Congress, and has only gotten better at maintaining appearances and polishing his reputation while still wallowing in dirty money.
But one can safely assume that all of this is what Obama meant when he said McCain was a master at gaming the system.
The Obama campaign has independently rejected money from federally registered lobbies and from PACs, and the DNC has now followed suit. Despite what the McCain campaign and the GOP might claim, Obama’s money–the vast majority from small donations from ordinary people–is far, far cleaner than the cash McCain is spending.
He should have. I think it’s a mistake. I don’t mind that the Obama campaign is letting surrogates like MoveOn and the DNC handle the fight about this, but he should have gone ahead and pointed out what big fat hypocrites the McCain campaign are and how they’re breaking the law in this case.
They’re hypocrites because McCain is taking private money, not public, for the primary campaign; and they’re breaking the law because he used the public money for collateral on a campaign loan and (as you point out) didn’t get the FEC’s permission to withdraw from the public system.
Obama could and should have rightfully hammered McCain on this point, IMO.
Maybe he’s holding those cards for one on one, in your face debates.
A leopard never changes its spots.
Obama can tell McCain that even when he’s says he’s using public financing, he turns around and doesn’t so he can’t be trusted on any commitment he makes in this regard.
This isn’t just about Obama vs. McCain. This is about politics being a battle for money. The objective is raising as much money as you can. I think that’s a bad thing, and it’s not why the system was set up in the first place. Now the Republicans will be even more zealous in raising money, and Obama and the Democrats will follow. That’s good for politics… how, exactly?
And then the public financing system will be in a shambles and we’ll be left with the system America had before Watergate.
Steve: it’s a great leap forward because it is a step toward a truly clean campaign: a campaign that depends purely on small, personal donations from voters. I know that Obama’s campaign isn’t just that, he accepts other money, but this is clearly a step in the right direction, and potentially a critically important one. If Obama can show that it is possible to fund a campaign with small voter contributions, then the next step is a campaign which limits itself to nothing else, and tries its hardest to discourage 3rd-party money as well–at the very least making it crystal clear that such outside support is unwelcome and will not be rewarded with favor or face time.
If we can go over the heads of the Congress–who will never vote to institute a truly clean campaign finance system–and pressure them instead to take on this type of funding, accepting only personal donations and none more than a few hundred dollars, maybe capping it at a thousand per person/family, accepting no money from lobbies, businesses, unions, or whatever–that will signal the cleanest campaign imaginable in modern times.
That’s one reason why Obama’s move is a constructive one. He’s not just blowing smoke when he says the current system is broken. Look at McCain: he truly is gaming the system, big-time. He has dozens of lobbyists in key campaign positions. He is able to use his wife’s corporate jet, he accepts money from political action groups, he takes in huge amounts of corporate donations, he gets support from outside groups. Early on, he used public financing to secure a loan, profiting from taxpayer money but then skipping on the responsibilities. And this is supposed to be Mr. Campaign Finance Reform himself!
I know that Obama himself is not completely clean–
he’s getting 527 support himself and[Edit: Obama has asked that no 527’s support him, and they are complying–MoveOn.org has shuttered its 527 operation. McCain still welcomes 527 support.] takes some organizational money. But he does not accept PAC money, does not accept money from federal lobbyists, and is driven mostly by small, individual donations… which makes him ten times more clean than McCain.But the point here is that someone like McCain can run around saying, “Hey look! I’m following campaign finance rules! I’m Mr. Clean! My opponent is a corrupt bastard because he’s not!” –with the truth being that his opponent is in fact the less corrupt candidate, in part because he doesn’t do “public” financing, wherein he would therefore from necessity game the system in as corrupt a fashion as McCain.
Obama is showing up the fact that the “clean” system is just as corrupt as ever. The contrast between him and McCain–if the media has an ounce of courage necessary to point this out–will make clear how much better small-donation limits and freedom from corporate/organizational money is.
Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. If there’s a loophole, politicians will find it. I hope you’re right.
I think it’s the timing that bugs me more than anything. If he doesn’t want to accept public financing, fine. But if he knew all along that the system is broken, why was he content to keep that option open until last week and 2/3rds of a billion dollars later? It just feels politician-y. And what would Democrats be saying if the tables were turned and the Republican candidate was the fundraising juggernaut who turned down public financing?
As far as media coverage is concerened, don’t be too concerned about it. I’m sure a very sizable majority of the public doesn’t know and doesn’t care about the public financing issue. I wouldn’t sweat it.
That’s the beauty of a campaign driven by small donations: there are no loopholes. You either stick to small donations or you don’t. Any “loopholes” would stick out like a sore thumb. Right now, the loopholes don’t show so easily because the public financing system is so twisted and complex–I mean, really, how many people understand what a 527 is, or half of the other stuff involved? With a convoluted and complex system, you could have loopholes big enough to drive a truck through and people wouldn’t notice. Small-donation-financing is ultimately simple, therefore hard to hide loopholes in. Obama is not fully there, but is almost, and I’d like to see him go all the way and stay with purely small donations.
Oh, without a doubt, it’s opportunistic; if he couldn’t have raised the money this way, he almost certainly would have gone the public finance route–which he appeared to anticipate when he made that pledge. He kind of lucked into the small-donation route. But if it is better than public financing, and if it can start a new trend, then that’s the way it should be.
That would depend on where the money was coming from. If the money came from almost purely small donations, I am sure that there would be roughly the same griping as there is with Obama about delivering a blow to the system, but it would be hard to get past the fact that it’s mostly small donations. If, on the other hand, the Rep. nominee were to go on a lobbyist/special-interest-funded non-public financing spree, that would be different–it would be the very picture of corruption.
One last note, going back to how Obama is taking this route simply because he can: I fully favor the idea of running campaigns purely on small donations. If a candidate can’t get enough Americans to put their money where their mouths are, then they’re probably not going to win anyway.