Barack Obama faced widespread condemnation on Friday from both right and left for reneging on a promise on election campaign financing.
The Democratic presidential candidate found himself in the unusual position of being attacked not only by his Republican rival, John McCain, but also by papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, think tanks committed to election reform, and even his own supporters.
Obama promised last year that he would abide by the election funding scheme set up after the 1974 Watergate scandal, provided his Republican rival would too. The scheme provides each candidate with $85-million from the public purse to fight the election campaign from early September to November 4, on condition they accept no outside money.
McCain, less successful at fund-raising than Obama, agreed on Thursday to take public funding but Obama said he was not going to participate, the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Obama’s campaign team said he made the decision because the existing system is open to abuse by the Republicans. But signing up for the $85-million deal would be to squander a big advantage he has in fund-raising.
Up to the end of April, Obama raised $265-million, spent mainly on his battle for the Democratic nomination with Hillary Clinton, compared with McCain’s $115-million by the end of May. Obama is on course to raise at least another $265-million between now and the election.
Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser in the McCain campaign team, led the attack on Friday, saying that breaking the promise raised questions about trust. ”As we scrutinise Obama’s words, it is increasingly difficult … to discern what Obama truly believes at his core,” he said.
The Republican party on Friday distributed copies of editorials from papers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Times said: ”The excitement underpinning Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr Obama has come up short of that standard with this decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.”
The Washington Post was also indignant: ”He had an opportunity here to demonstrate that he really is a different kind of politician, willing to put principles and promises he has made above political calculations. He made a different choice.”
Michael Malbin, director of the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute, expressed disappointment and said the system would probably have worked well again this year. He thought the public funds should have been sufficient. ”A million dollars a day doesn’t look to me like chicken feed,” he said.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, an Obama supporter, called Obama’s reversal ”not a good decision”.
Obama aired his first general election ad on Friday across 18 states, in a demonstration of his spending power. In an article for USA Today, Obama wrote: ”The decision wasn’t an easy one … but the public financing of presidential elections … is broken — and the Republican party has mastered the art of gaming this broken system.”
His team argues that while McCain has agreed to the limit, there are groups with millions at their disposal who could back campaigns such as the Swift Boat one in 2004 that challenged the Vietnam record of the Democratic candidate, John Kerry. His team also says that the Republican party is cash-rich compared with the Democrats. Both parties can spend on campaigning separate from their candidates. — guardian.co.uk