Obama gets scolded by the Post, wrist-slapped by the NYT

Neither of the liberal press’ two leading lights much cared for Barack Obama’s welching on his pledge to accept public financing yesterday, but the Washington Post lights into Obama, while the Times merely shakes its head sadly.  The latter sighs mightily over Obama’s reversal, noting that at least one of his rationalizations is incorrect, and hopes that Obama doesn’t go down in history merely for his role in killing public financing for elections:

Mr. Obama’s power to excite average donations of less than $100 also is admirable, and his concerns about his opponent are understandable. The Republican Party is raising a great deal of money, and shadow groups known as 527s have tens of millions to spend. Mr. McCain knows the power of these groups since they slimed him out of the 2000 Republican primaries. Now that he’s the presumptive nominee, however, he is inviting them into the fray on his behalf.

But Mr. Obama’s description of public financing as “broken” is only half true.

Senator Russ Feingold, the ranking authority on campaign-finance reform, called Mr. Obama’s retreat “not a good decision.” He rightly points out that while the primary cycle’s public matching subsidies are “broken” and need updating for inflation, “the system for the general election is not.”

Has John McCain been “inviting” 527s?  In fact, he has said pretty much what Obama has said, which is that he wants them to stay out of the presidential race.  McCain has opposed the 527s since they arose in 2000 and became much more prominent in 2004 — thanks to an unintended consequence of his campaign-finance reform legislation.   Unlike Barack Obama, McCain actually tried to take action to shut them down, whether one thinks that wise or not.  In March, he accused 527s of “distorting the entire process” and said “they need to be outlawed”:

So we have Barack Obama not just reversing himself but lying about the reasons he did so, and the New York Times backing the lie. The Post, on the other hand, will have none of that:

BARACK OBAMA isn’t abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it’s in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn’t about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he’d get if he stuck to his promise — and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama’s earlier pledge to “aggressively pursue” an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. “It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,” Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters.

Obama did it for the money, not for the high-minded ideals he claimed to cherish as he threw them under the bus. The Post notes that Obama specifically told their editorial board that he would accept public financing if the Republican nominee did the same, and repeated that pledge on a number of occasions. Only after it became clear that he could outraise the Republicans did Obama change his mind, and it wasn’t because of 527s, attack ads, or any of the other excuses Obama gave for breaking his word.

The Post especially gags on the notion that Obama abandoned public financing as a “bold good-government move”. That was supposedly the reason he supported public financing of elections. Private funding was seen as an invitation to corruption and influence. What does it say about Obama that he believes that, and yet decides to go where the money is? The word that springs to mind isn’t “bold”. It’s “hypocrite”.

If the Times still feels the need to rationalize Obama’s moves through outright lies, the Post has had the scales fall from their eyes with this last betrayal. Welcome to Chicago, boys.

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