Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially opt out of the federal public campaign-finance system — which a New York Times analysis paints as “the most critical threat to its survival.”
But is it?
The story outlines some history, but ignores the reality of the last two presidential races — campaigns in which the major-party candidates went private during the primaries, building up huge warships and spending oodles of cash before opting in after the party conventions.
And the story’s most damning quote —
“Obama’s decision may not be the death knell of public financing, but it certainly is close to it,” said Anthony J. Corrado Jr., a campaign finance expert and professor of government at Colby College. “Public financing has become a system of last resort, rather than the jewel of the campaign finance system. Rather than being a source of funds, candidates accept public money kicking and screaming.”
— is really a comment full of nuance that deserved more context. Its implication is that the system is not working, that candidates only participate because they believe they must.
In fact, the story’s most significant comment comes at the end:
“The reality is that the amount of money that comes from the government is not enough to run a modern presidential campaign,” said Larry Makinson, a consultant to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks campaign donations. “The amount Obama has raised from small contributors has been unprecedented. There has never been an infusion of small dollar donors like this.
“And,” Mr. Makinson said, “he got there by snubbing the campaign finance system.”
Obama’s arguments — that his fundraising apparatus, by collecting millions of small donations, acts as a shadow public-financing system; that
the public financing apparatus was broken and that his Republican opponents were masters at “gaming” the system and would spend “millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations” smearing him.
— is both fact-based and disingenuous. It is doubtful, after all, that he would have opted out if he did not believe he could out raise his opponent by a significant margin.
And, as the Times notes in its main bar, the GOP’s “527 advantage” may not materialize this year.
It also is doubtful that John McCain would be making such a big deal out of this if he wasn’t having such difficulty raising money himself. After all, McCain has been trying to play both sides of this issue for months, taking out a loan to keep his primary campaign going — using the promise of public funds as collateral — and then backing away when he appears to win the nomination and set his financial house in order.
The issue here has less to do with the candidates anyway than with the system itself. If we want it to work, we need to expand it dramatically and provide it with a legitimate and recurring source of funding. We need to provide free television and radio time to help reduce the costs and we need to look at 527s — independent groups that can spend whatever they want — to see if they can be policed without infringing on their First Amendment rights.
Hank Kalet 