Do The Right Thing

As it becomes ever more evident that Barack  Obama will be able to continue raising almost unlimited cash so long as there's a world wide web, John McCain has a bone to pick with the presumptive Democratic nominee.  Inconvenient as it may be to Obama's big picture plans, McCain is reminding him of the agreement the two of them made last year (detailed here by Kenneth P. Vogel at Politico.com) to accept public financing, thereby limiting each candidate to $85 million in funding for the general election campaign.  At the time, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea to the Illinois upstart.  He was just another face in a crowded room (albeit a room filled with old, white faces so it's not like he didn't stand out).  Who could have predicted his embarrassment of riches?  Now, to limit his funding to a paltry $85 million seems absurd, given his remarkable abilities to persuade folks to pony up for his cause on a monthly basis, $25 at a time.

Trouble is, McCain has a point.

These guys are both running as reformers:  McCain cruises around the country in the Straight Talk Express, pissing off evangelicals, right-wing talk radio hosts and fat-cat lobbyists while Obama promises to ride into Washington and change the mindset of the city itself by getting Democrats, Republicans and Independents to sit together and compromise like reasonable men, thereby further promoting the image of Camelot and its mythical Round Table that was first invoked by the Bobby Kennedy comparisons.

And, as a reformer, one of Obama's hole cards has  always been campaign finance.  He lists it front and center on the Ethics page of his website:

"Obama introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and is the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) tough bill to reform the presidential public financing system."

The whole point of the Feingold legislation is to reduce the influence of private money and provide candidates with enough public funding to run an effective campaign without having to become full-time telemarketers.  The Washington Post quoted Obama last February:

"Congress concluded some thirty years ago that the public funding alternative . . . would serve core purposes in the public interest:  limiting the escalation of campaign spending and the associated pressures on candidates to raise, at the expense of time devoted to public dialogue, ever vaster sums of money."

He has promoted campaign reform, he has voted for campaign reform and he has written campaign reform.  Most importantly, he has campaigned on campaign reform.  Now, if he wants to maintain his integrity as an agent of change from George Bush's blatant mendacity and Bill Clinton's parsing of the truth, he must stand by his pledge.

Besides, money, while obviously important, may not be the magic bullet this time around.  McCain's most effective marketing is the continuous barrage of shameless character assassination and innuendo that the GOP and party faithful heap upon Obama.  They're like mental patients in the asylum slinging fecal matter against the walls to see what sticks:  from declaring Barack Hussein Obama a closet Muslim who took his oath of office on the Koran, to accusing him of refusing to pledge allegiance in a patriotic enough fashion, to claiming he was educated in an Indonesian madrassah.   McCain doesn't pay a dime for this crap.  It's out there, all the time, and he can pick and choose which of the most outrageous of the charges to disassociate himself from on those rare occasions when he is asked about them.  He has pledged to run a positive, issues-based campaign, so we can only assume that his legitimate, paid advertising will steer clear of these insults to the electorate's intelligence.  Unfortunately, hobbled by the truth, he would be reduced to trying to defeat Obama on a platform of Bush tax cuts and the Hundred Years Surge.  I don't think even he believes that will work.  So I'm guessing the slander will continue.

And as for Obama, the mainstream press may as well be a branch of his campaign.  Have you watched Hardball lately?  It's like a 60-minute Barack infomercial.  I don't know what Hillary did to piss off Chris Matthews but, whatever it was, it wasn't worth it.  Ditto for Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  If they're this biased for Obama against a Democrat, I can hardly wait to see what they have in store for McCain in the general election.

The point is, both of them are getting much of what they need for free, anyway.  There's so much media coverage now that political advertising doesn't carry anywhere near the weight it did when the financing laws were written.  Seriously, when's the last time you actually paid attention to a campaign commercial on television?

My question is, why not fight McCain even up, Barack?  You've got the momentum, the message, a tanking economy, an endless war.  Your organization on a state-by-state basis is the envy of all of your opponents.  You're younger, more eloquent and you're not a Republican following George Bush.  Plus, you're capable of beginning a sentence without the words, "My friends."  These are huge advantages.  

And most crucially, it's the right thing to do.  It's what got you to this point.  As you're fond of pointing out, "No one said this would be easy."  The high road can be a lonely place but it's where you need to be.