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.
