Obama opts out of reform
SENATOR Barack Obama has presented himself as the candidate of change, but the change he announced yesterday is a throwback to the no-holds-barred rules of campaign finance that prevailed before Watergate. Obama will be the first major party candidate since Watergate to reject public financing in the general election, instead relying on his base of more than 1.5 million donors for a war chest that could easily double or triple the $84.1 he would get in public financing. His decision deals a body blow both to the system of campaign finance and to his own reputation as a reform candidate.
The campaign-finance system was none too sturdy even before Obama's action. He defends the move by noting that, while the law sets caps on spending by candidates who accept the Treasury's money, the party national committees and independent activist groups can bring their own funding to bear in a general election. Obama is justifiably worried that his Democratic National Committee might be outgunned by its Republican counterpart and that privately supported groups of the sort that so effectively Swift-Boated John Kerry in 2004 could try to do the same to him this year.
Obama also defends his rejection of public financing by arguing that his legions of grassroots, small-sum donors achieve the purpose of public financing by drowning out the impact of larger contributors. According to one of his aides, more than 90 percent of the donations the campaign receives are for $100 or less. Obama also rejects donations from lobbyists.
Yet, while these circumstances should protect Obama from the worst pressure of special-interest groups, he has set a worrisome precedent. The techniques of Internet fund-raising that his aides have so effectively mastered could in a future election be used to assemble a mass donor base with a more self-interested agenda. By the next election, it is quite likely that neither major candidate will limit herself or himself to public financing. John McCain, long an advocate of campaign finance reform, said yesterday he would accept public financing this year.
To make public financing more attractive, Congress should expand the amount available to candidates and place new limits on the national committees and the independent, Swift Boat-style groups known as 527s for the section of the Internal Revenue Service code that authorizes them. Changes like this would reduce the chance that candidates of the future will revert to the shakedown-style fund-raising of the Nixon administration, which brought on the Watergate reforms. Whichever candidate wins in November should put campaign finance reform at the top of his priority list. 