Let all the children lose it, let the children use it...

Today, Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, announced he will not partake in the public financing system for presidential campaigns.

“The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” The junior Illinois Senator said. “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

The public financing system was created in 1976, after the Watergate Scandal. However, Theodore Roosevelt first suggested public funds in 1907 as a way to ban private contributions, discouraging graft, special interests and the like. Funny how things turn out, no?

Senator Obama's campaign is funded by all kinds of people through his website. According to Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama's communications director, "more than 90% of the campaign’s contributions were for $100 or less." Many of Mr. Obama's contributers are young and first time voters. Now, while there's hardly a special interest in that group, I do wonder about that other less than 10%. Also, the sky's the limit on how much he can spend.

So, 32 years later, the proverbial pendulum's swinging the opposite way. If Mr. Obama's gambit is successful, private funding will break again, as the special interest groups will start providing private funding and the political arena will once more look like it did to Mr Roosevelt. Hopefully, they won't be during this campaign. It's messy enough as it is.

Get Down America!

Back in 1976, the citizens of the United States were still reeling from the Vietnam War, Watergate and the tragic losses of men like John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X the decade before. The great hope in the American Dream was replaced by something darker...cynicism. Just look at the movies of the time; Marathon Man, Network, Taxi Driver...the list goes on and on. However, there was a writer who saw the tone and turned his cynicism to satire. He was writing one of the most successful comics on the stands. His name was Steve Gerber. His comic? Howard The Duck.



The American people had a lousy choice ahead of them. They could pick political stooge, Gerald Ford, or they could pick the inexperienced peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter. Heck of a choice, right? No wonder we were so damn cynical!


At the time, Mr. Gerber was working on one of the more popular funny books on the newsstands; Howard The Duck. Howard hailed from an alternate reality where ducks became the dominant life form. So, he was no more or less ridiculous than the 2 choices presented to the American people. In issue number 8, Mr. Gerber decided to toss Howard The Duck into the political ring. As Gerber stated in Back Issue Magazine, “the nature of the character lent itself to satire,and being the first election after Watergate it was a very peculiar time in American political history.”

Long story short, Howard found himself working as a security guard at the All Night Party's national political convention. Howard saves one of their candidates and the party decides to nominate Howard for President.

There's a scene in Batman Returns that's very reminiscent of this story. Howard's Campaign Manager, G.Q. Studley, tells Howard and his friend that candidates don't think, they recite. Howard in turn bites Studley's nose. Remind you of The Penguin much? Anyway, the thing is, here was Howard The Duck, an absolutely ridiculous character, showing us how weak our politicians had become. Sadly, it's still true today. Sure, there's a lot of rhetoric, but said speeches tend to contradict both Senator Obama's and Senator McCain's records.

Howard The Duck's run for president, while short-lived (it ended with a bathtub sex scandal), cast a mirror on the shambling American political process. It's unfortunate that the book's audience was a bunch of kids who couldn't wait to see Howard fight a giant beaver at Niagra Falls in the next issue.

I miss Steve Gerber's work tremendously. I would have loved to see what he would do with Doctor Fate in our current political climate. At the same time, at least he's no longer trapped in a world he never made.