Obama’s already got public financing

I am no expert on campaign finance reform. But I’ve followed the issue for a long time.So when I got asked over breakfast about the headlines covering Obama’s opting out of public financing, I started trying to lay out the basics. And I was surprised about how remarkably straightforward the issue actually is.

We’ve always been concerned about the influence of money in politics. In the past such influence has taken the form of a relative handful of wealthy donors, and people fronting for businesses, filling campaigns’ warchests. This was a problem for democracy because this handful of people would almost certainly have an undue influence, directly or indirectly, on the politician they helped elect.

Public financing came along as an antidote — a way for large numbers of not-so-wealthy individuals to pool their contributions, using the government as a middleman, so that they could help finance the campaigns of politicians who didn’t want to take big contributions from the wealthy few. If they won, these officials wouldn’t be beholden to a small coterie of fat cats; they’d have been funded by a vast crowd. That seemed like a good road for democracy.

So here comes Obama. His campaign has managed — through both the general enthusiasm of his following and through very savvy use of the Internet — to assemble something unprecedented in American politics: a multitude of small contributors (something like a million and a half people) who have swelled his campaign chest by ponying up a huge volume of modest amounts.

In a sense, Obama is already a publicly financed candidate. The government used to be the middleman; now the Internet plays the same role. As I read cynical takes on Obama’s move (like that of David Brooks), I can’t help thinking: isn’t this what public financing was all about? Isn’t pooling a multitude of small individual contributions the ideal way of financing a political campaign? Don’t we want more campaigns to be like Obama’s? What exactly is the problem?

As they put it over at Mother Jones:

By opting out of the public financing system, Obama is acknowledging that money will always play a crucial role in American politics. But by discouraging donations to independent groups, focusing on small donors, and refusing PAC and lobbyist money, he’s also trying to insure that money plays the right role in American politics.

http://www.wordyard.com/2008/06/20/obamas-public-financing/