Oh, what next? OFA for the War Powers Act?

The reorganized Obama campaign, now called Organizing for Action, is jumping into the New York state legislative effort, pushed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), to pass campaign finance reform that would include public financing of candidates.

As first reported by Politico, the nonprofit OFA will send an email to its 744,000 members in New York on Tuesday endorsing the call for public financing and will host a Wednesday tele-town-hall meeting with New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to rally those members.

If you’ll remember, it was Barack Obama himself who destroyed the national public financing system in one of his early prominent, cynical, convenient broken promises disguised as a moving call for citizen involvement or something. Obama was the first modern candidate to reject public financing, because he knew he could get plenty of money without it. Since then, we’ve had the first presidential election without it because Mitt Romney, predictably, turned it down, too.

Not that I care. The last thing we should be doing is paying these guys to run for office when they can get plenty of moolah without extracting it from taxpayers to use as some veil of credibility. But, you know, Barack Obama was supposed to care about this, and now the organization formerly named after him has decided it’s convenient for them to care about it once again. From 2008’s 180:

Citing the specter of attacks from independent groups on the right, Senator Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would opt out of the public financing system for the general election.

His decision to break an earlier pledge to take public money will quite likely transform the landscape of presidential campaigns, injecting hundreds of millions of additional dollars into the race and raising doubts about the future of public financing for national races.

In becoming the first major party candidate to reject public financing and its attendant spending limits, Mr. Obama contended that the public financing apparatus was broken and that his Republican opponents were masters at “gaming” the system and would spend “millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations” smearing him.

But it is not at all clear at this point in the evolving campaign season that Republicans will have the advantage when it comes to support from independent groups. In fact, the Democrats appear much better poised to benefit from such efforts.

Ahh yes, President Obama. Perenially complaining about being outgunned, but never actually outgunned.

The OFA e-mail in favor of New York public financing argues pretty much the same thing Obama’s statement about rejecting public financing did in 2008.

If they succeed, I guess they just better hope Obama never wants to run in New York, at which point rejecting public financing will become the only way to redeem the public financing system. Below, a flashback to the guy Rep. Nancy Pelosi believes has “never done anything for political reasons.”