The biggest frustration in my view this week comes from the Obama Campaign. According to Nielsen, 33.6 million people watched his infomercial (not me...I was busy playing pool). The 30 minute prime time spot cost Obama nearly $4 million.
This is the same man that originally promised to run a publicly funded campaign, then backed down from that promise. This is the same campaign that raised more than $272 million since January 2007 (twice as much as John McCain), and still has the balls to email me today saying they are stretched too thinly, "without a safety net," and need more of my money.
There is a lot I like about Obama, and I truly think he'll make better decisions than McCain. But backing down on his promise of public funding has set a nasty and expensive precedent for future candidates.
A good analysis from the WSJ: This election is the rematch that John Kerry had not delivered on. In the fashion of the crowd that seeks and sees the justice of retribution, Mr. Obama's supporters have been willing to overlook his means. So a candidate pledged to good government and to ending the role of money in our political life opts out of public financing of presidential campaigns. What of it? The end justifies the means." Full very well-written story: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122533157015082889-lMyQjAxMDI4MjM1MDMzMzAxWj.html
ReplyDeleteI absolutely disagree. The purpose of public financing is to 1) cut back on the influence of special interests in elections and 2) to ensure that anyone (not just the extremely wealthy) can run for public office. Barack Obama went up against the Clinton political machine during the primary, which is when he agreed to accept public financing. However, the public (in record numbers) responded to his campaign and his campaign set a huge foundation of low-level individual donors. These are not the people whose influence was supposed to be limited. These are the donors that we WANT involved in elections. For that reason, it was completely reasonable for Obama to "go back" on his offer to abide by the restrictions of public financing.
ReplyDeleteBy encouraging the public to get involved in his campaign, and energizing hundreds of thousands of new voters, his campaign has done wonders for our system of democracy - much more than whatever theoretical damage he did to the already floundering system of publicly financed campaigns.