When Enough Is Finally Enough
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Barack Obama is certainly a media favorite as this election season continues and there is no doubt that he gets better coverage than does John McCain. Still, it is possible, evidently, for Obama to anger media figures and related to that, consider Ruth Marcus enraged:
When in the course of political events it becomes advantageous for a presidential candidate to dissolve a campaign promise, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the candidate at least refrain from wrapping himself in the Declaration of Independence.
Not Barack Obama.
Click on Obama's campaign Web site and you'll find a virtual parchment scroll, complete with running tally of how many "citizens have declared their independence from a broken system by supporting the first presidential campaign truly funded by the people."
Written as " the PEOPLE," in that familiar, evocative style -- and with a July 4 deadline for signing up.
So Obama isn't just junking his campaign pledge to participate in the public financing system if his opponent agreed to do the same. He isn't just becoming the first presidential candidate since Watergate to run a campaign fueled entirely by private money.
No, he deserves praise for this selfless -- scratch that, patriotic-- move.
Marcus's contempt is as dripping as it is rightfully placed. The common answer of Obama acolytes and the campaign itself to accusations of Obamanian hypocrisy have been to argue that the decision to opt out of public financing allows the Obama campaign the ability to run a truly people-powered race for the White House.
But Marcus throws cold water on that argument as well, pointing out that Obama now has access to
. . . bundlers who can collect six- and even seven-figure sums for your campaign. Because even as he was rhapsodizing in public about "the grass-roots values that have already changed our politics and brought us this far," Obama was privately cozying up to Hillary Clinton's major fundraisers.
Earlier this month, he dispatched his campaign manager, David Plouffe, to woo Clinton bundlers in Washington and New York. This week, Clinton will introduce Obama to nearly 200 of her major bundlers, including some who have raised $1 million or more, in a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel.
"This group could represent 50 million, if not 100 million, bucks," said one top Clinton strategist.
I am still waiting for the Obama campaign to come out and admit the obvious: that the reason they opted out of the public financing system was because they would be able to raise more money privately and enhance Obama's chances of winning the election. Instead, we continue to have our collective intelligence insulted by the claim that Obama's decision to opt out of public financing somehow constitutes an act of political bravery and selflessness. It's nice to see that journalists like Ruth Marcus are finding their voices and calling shenanigans, but really, the outrage needs to be greater on this issue.
