Obama Campaign Finance
by Matt Varvaro
Issue 113 - August 6, 2008

There are legitimate philosophical arguments against the system of public financing of presidential campaigns - the most obvious being that the campaigns should not be funded by the public, but instead by each candidate's voting constituency, so that the candidate with more supporters willing to donate will have more money than his opponent. This seems logical. If two businesses are competing for a group of prospective customers, the government has no place devising a tax system that raises funds to be evenly distributed to each business in order to "even out the playing field" and prevent any sort of financial advantage of one over the other. This is the obvious flaw of the public finance and regulation of any entity, including presidential politics, and this argument has been made countless times over the years. But never by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

In fact, Senator Obama has consistently been an outspoken advocate of public financing. Moreover, he reminded the voters time and again that, once the general election rolled along, he would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." In a televised debate with Senator Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Obama pledged to "sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that works for everybody." Well, the general election is finally here; no such agreement has been aggressively pursued, no such meeting with Senator McCain has occurred, and Senator Obama has announced that his campaign will completely forgo public funds, the first candidate of either party to do so in the general election in the thirty-plus years the system has been in place.

For a candidate who has already raised over $250 million since he officially announced his candidacy early last year, including more than $58 million in the month of February 2008 alone, it should come as no surprise that Senator Obama would rather count on the virtually unrestricted donations by his own supporters than a public financing system that would only permit him about $84 million for his general election campaign. This alone is not unreasonable, nor is it as morally offensive as some are making it out to be. The system is in place to give candidates a fair shot at securing advertising funds.

If Senator Obama doesn't need it, which clearly he doesn't, there's no reason that he should participate, of course, aside from the fact that he had clearly indicated that he would accept public funds, or at least make an effort to work something out with his opponent.

The question is, why couldn't he just say that? Even though he went back on his word, at least the voters would understand his reasoning if he just explained that, due to his unprecedented fundraising success, he would prefer to opt out of public financing in order to raise more money. It would be pretty hard to hold that against him.

Instead, in his official statement regarding this decision, the senator offered this convoluted explanation: "We've made the decision not to participate in the public-financing system for the general election. This means we'll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds during the final months of this election. It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections. But 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."

So, according to Senator Obama, he is not opting out of public financing because it's useless to him, but rather because the system is "broken" and needs to be reformed. This, of course, raises the obvious question of why Senator Obama did not try to work out some sort of compromise with Senator McCain (as he had promised), who is known for his openness to compromise and reform, especially with members of the opposing party. It's amazing how a candidate who supports such a "robust" system can actually find it in himself to completely abandon it.

Clearly, Obama has no interest in reform or negotiations when it comes to his fundraising; he just wants to be left alone to do what seems inevitable at this point: vastly outspend his opponent in every conceivable fashion.

But once again, the problem is not that Senator Obama rejected public financing, or even that he went back on his earlier promise to participate. The problem is his laughable explanation for it: that the system is "broken," so he will not partake in it on moral grounds - this is a glaringly obvious lie. He is rejecting public funds because he knows that he can raise more money without them, which is a good reason.

But that's not the reason he gave to the American people, so not only did he go back on his word, but also directly lied to the voters. By making this pledge to reform the system without actually doing so in this election, Senator Obama will make sure that he is not bogged down by public financing, but that the Democratic candidates after him will be.