Campaign Fund Pledge “Take-Back” Fallout
By LisaB on June 21, 2008 at 10:20 AM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Campaigns & Campaign Financing, Fund Raising
The story of Barack Obama revisiting and redacting his pledge to take public campaign funds has been out for a day now. Generally speaking this announcement has been met with disapproval and disappointment, except by kool-aid drinkers at the HuffyPot.
* Well, hold your hats, the WaPo today slapped Obama for his change of, er, heart(?).
BARACK OBAMA isn’t abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it’s in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn’t about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he’d get if he stuck to his promise — and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.
Holy Cow! After recapping Obama’s statements about public financing from a little while ago (he was FOR it), the WaPo characterized his move this way:
Instead, he cast his abandonment of the system as a bold good-government move. “This is our moment, and our country is depending on us,” he said. “So join me, and declare your independence from this broken system and let’s build the first general election campaign that’s truly funded by the American people.” Sure, and if the Founding Fathers were around today, they’d have bundlers, too.
* And at Politico, a timeline of Obama statements on this topic are interspersed with video of him. Wow! Really, you must see this.
* Factcheck.org at Newsweek, called bs on Obama’s justification for his switch:
One reason, he said, is that “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.”
We find that to be a large exaggeration and a lame excuse. In fact, donations from PACs and lobbyists make up less than 1.7 percent of McCain’s total receipts, and they account for only about 1.1 percent of the RNC’s receipts.
* The WSJ had this to say:
So much moral good was expected from “campaign-finance reform” that Barack Obama’s announcement yesterday that he will opt out of public financing for his Presidential run is an historic moment. Senator Obama is the first candidate since the law was passed in the 1970s not to take matching funds for the general election. Even candidate George W. Bush, flush with cash in 2000 and 2004, didn’t do that.
“Even candidate George W. Bush. . . didn’t do that.” Ouch!
* The New Republic, on the other hand, says Obama has an “inside game” where he is a ruthless SOB and an “outside game” where everything is straightforward.
The key with Obama is to distinguish between his inside game (i.e., mechanical, procedural, largely behind-the-scenes maneuvering) and his outside game (i.e., the policies/positions/stands he takes on the public stage). Obama has been as ruthless as anyone at playing the inside game, but less cynical than most when it comes to the outside game.
OK, so Obama tries to keep his evil twin from appearing to all the clueless masses, who get angel Obama. The evil twin operates in the bowels of politics and we just don’t see him? Some would call this schizophrenic. Or is it just a basketball metaphor gone bad?
* Of course, no friend to Obama, David Brooks of NYT, had an interesting op-ed today. He seems to have come to the conclusion that there are two Obamas.
But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.
But the best part of this op-ed:
And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa’s final steps to sainthood.
Oh snap, did he say Lee Atwater? I have two quibbles with this op-ed. 1) WTH took you sooooooo long? and 2) It’s “bus” not “truck.”
* Also at the Politico, Ben Smith had this to say about what Obama’s “opt-out” says about him:
Obama’s move wasn’t out of character. In fact — though he has at times adopted popular reform causes — Obama has never been a traditional reformer. He came to politics through the community organizing movement, whose radical founder, Saul Alinsky, mocked highbrow reformers, and focused instead on the acquisition and use of power, with the ends often justifying the means.
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Kerry’s campaign, Shrum wrote in his memoir, “No Excuses,” had a fierce internal debate over whether to opt out of public financing. Obama’s never seems to have seriously considered sacrificing its political advantage for a principle and seems cheerfully resigned to being chided by East Coast editorial boards.
Hey, east coast editorial boards!! Welcome to the underside of the bus!! No, it’s not a hydrogen one either.
* At realclearpolitics, Liz Sidoti started a disapproving analysis this way:
Barack Obama chose winning over his word.
and she finished it this way.
“You’ve fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford,” Obama said in an appeal seeking donations from $25 to $2,300 and beyond.
“Let’s build the first general election campaign that’s truly funded by the American people,” Obama said — ignoring the fact that the system he’s opting out of is paid for by taxpayers who donate $3 to the fund when they file their tax returns.
Obama blamed his decision in part on McCain and “the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups.” But he failed to mention that the only outside groups running ads in earnest so far are those aligned with Obama — and running commercials against McCain.
So much for being a straight shooter.
* FoxNews (transcript at realclearpolitics), as might be expected, were not complimentary. Still, the roundtable with Brit Hume did provide some fun stuff. After showing a clip of Obama, Mort Kondracke of Roll Call had this to say:
They call that “liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Wow! The kindergarten slam – only used for the most OBVIOUS and IRREFUTABLE of lies.
Oh yeah. Huffypot. Well, what do you THINK is the prevailing opinion???
Come on, you KNOW.
Johnathan Solomon is quite happy:
Barack Obama has gone back on his word, Barack Obama is a hypocrite … I couldn’t be happier. With Obama turning down public financing, idealist can be heard saying, “Obama promised ‘a new kind of politics.’” Well, let him get to that once he’s in office.
Robert Creamer apparently had to work harder to twist himself around on this one:
As a life-long advocate for public financing of elections, I believe that Barack Obama’s decision not to participate in the current presidential public finance system will advance the day when we will finally have a true system of public financing for all federal races.
Google if you must. I don’t link to the ‘Pot.
by Ronald Scott
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