Real public financing

I guess this is what happens when you try to run a political campaign on the premise that lying is bad – you don’t get to change course due to circumstances without looking bad.\nLast week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama decided to forgo the typical public-financing structure for his general-election campaign, becoming the first candidate to do so since the system was first developed, instead favoring his own fundraising strategy of soliciting small donations from thousands of individual supporters. \nThe only problem I have with Obama’s decision is that he, at one point, had actually planned to use public financing. That was just a dumb decision; it would have been hard to predict the outpouring of cash support from Obama’s army of supporters. But the public financing system is horribly flawed. It’s supposed to preclude corporate influence on campaigns, but the 527 loophole (which allows campaign action by private, nonprofit groups) basically renders that moot. \nA candidate running on a platform dominated by change should have recognized that he should rely on his supporters, not the government, for his money. Going in that direction from the start would have given him a huge rhetorical advantage. \nSo I don’t have a problem with Obama forgoing public funds. Honestly, there are better ways we could spend tax money. He should have chosen a smarter way of doing it, but he can’t help that now, and it would have been a strategically idiotic decision to cede his biggest advantage over McCain: The fact that the Democratic Party likes its nominee, and the Republicans don’t, the fact that people are willing to give the money they can spare to get Barack Obama elected.\nThe real problem is with the moral outrage from many of McCain’s supporters, who don’t seem to understand why the public-financing option exists in the first place. Take Sen. Lindsay Graham, for example. Sen. Graham said of Obama’s decision that it is “just really sad for the country. For somebody with this much ability, this much talent, to fall this far, this soon ... This guy wants to win, he’ll do anything to win.”\nReally? So accepting money from small donors is “falling”? That’s “doing anything to win”? As I said earlier, the whole point of public financing is to keep big business and special interests from funding candidates, and judging by the past 30 years or so of energy policy, it hasn’t worked. So now a candidate decides that instead of taking a government handout to run his campaign, he’ll let the voters who like him fund it. That’s supposed to be the end of Western Civilization?\nI’d agree more with the New York Times’ Francis Wilkinson, who said that Obama has actually come closer to achieving “the ideals of campaign finance reform” than the regulations ever have. In reality, Obama isn’t abandoning public financing. He’s the first candidate to have real public financing – he’s financed by the public.