Public financing agonistes
6/20/2008 - 5:13pm
Sen. Barack Obama's announcement yesterday that he would not participate in the presidential public financing system for the general elections got front page treatment in the newspapers today. Here are four reasons why his decision is more complicated than it first might seem.
Obama didn't break it. Obama is not the first candidate to take a look at the ailing Watergate-era presidential public financing system and decide he would do better without it. That honor goes to President George W. Bush, who, in 1999 shocked the political establishment by raising a then unheard of $37 million by the end of June, a full six months before anyone in Iowa, New Hampshire or anywhere else would be voting. Bush opted not to participate in the partial public financing system for presidential races, which would have required him to abide by spending limits, and went on to raise $101 million for his primary race, more than twice the amount raised by his most serious rival-yes, Sen. John McCain. In 2004, neither Bush nor Sen. John Kerry participated in the public financing system for their primary races, although they did for the general election (as Bush had also done in 2000). Obama is the first to decline to participate in the system for the general election, but his decision is part of an inexorable trend unless and until the system is fixed.
Small donors matter. Obama has raised more cash from small donors than any presidential candidate in history. One of the core ideas behind public financing of elections is to prevent our political system from devolving into plutocracy. With a record breaking 1.5 million donors giving to his campaign to date, and 45 percent of his individual contributions coming from donors giving $200 or less, Obama's campaign is a different kind of animal than what we've seen before. Note that through April 2000, Bush had collected just 13 percent of his contributions from such donors, and in April 2000, 22 percent. McCain has gotten one quarter of his contributions from donors giving $200 or less.
McCain is hardly pure here. McCain has done plenty of flipping and flopping on the public financing issue, as I wrote here. And as Loyola law professor Rick Hazen has written:
McCain's decision whether to opt into or out of the primary public financing system has changed along with his electoral prospects. At first, McCain said he would not participate. But when his campaign appeared near death last summer, he decided to opt into the public financing system. But then McCain rebounded, and he sent a letter to the FEC withdrawing his decision to opt in.
Come January 2009, what will the new president do? McCain is conspicuously absent from a bill to update the presidential public financing system and another to bring full public financing to congressional elections. Obama is a cosponsor of both. Whether he'd follow through as a resident of the White House is of course always a question-but at least he's on the record.
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public financing agonistes
As an Obama supporter, I'd like to make a few contrary observations. Though Obama certainly isn't the one who started to send the public financing system into a tailspin, or to speed that process, the fact remains that he clearly broke his word, having said earlier, quite emphatically, that as the nominee he'd accept public financing if his opponent would. Also, that 45% of his donors gave $200 or less means, turning that around, that 55%--more than half--gave more, many of them in a big, big way, as Ms. Watzman has reported earlier, I believe. Furthermore, McCain's flip-flops do not absolve Obama, who was supposed to be setting a new and higher standard in this very area. I'll still vote for Obama and do my best to help him get elected, but he has tarnished himself and has created an issue that makes him fair game for criticism. This isn't surprising since he isn't perfect, though he campaigned in the primaries as though he really was. -- Seefweetz
Seefweetz raises good
Seefweetz raises good points, and I'm not just saying that because I know him to be none other than my dad, Sanford, aka "Whitey," aka "Seefweetz," Watzman, who among his many other accomplishments, spent some 20 years as a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter.
1. On flipping and flopping. Whether or not Obama broke his word has been subject to endless discussion in the blogosphere. But however endlessly you parse his previous statements, I agree that he went against at the very least the spirit of his original pronouncement. (See this Washington Post analysis: (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/obama_reneges_on_public_financ.html)
However, it's also important to put that in the context of McCain's flip flopping on public financing. As you have taught me, nobody is perfect. Welcome to politics.
2. A little less than half full, a little more than half empty. It is quite true that the opposite of 45 percent small donors is 55 percent big donors. We've also got the rest of the election season to go, in which Obama may be expected to rake in more big contributions. However, it's also important to note Obama's unprecedented accomplishment. He truly has raised more cash from small donors than any presidential candidate in history. And he's taken other steps, such as refusing contributions from registered lobbyists.
3. The proof will be in the pudding. Obama clames here (http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/06/opposing-view-4.html) that as president he will work to make the public financing program viable. Will he do it? We don't know yet. I haven't seen any similar pronouncements by candidate McCain, although I'd be glad to see them.
One obvious question is whether Obama's decision to opt out of the public financing system for the general election takes away the political incentive to fix the system. While Obama may have made great strides in collecting contributions from small donors, he is the exception and not the rule, and, as you noted above, even he gets the majority of his money from big contributors. In most congressional campaigns, big donors contribute far higher percentages of the cash. That's why we need robust public financing programs for congressional and presidential campaigns.
The key word here, however, is "robust." We can't expect candidates to participate in public financing programs that are out of date. In Arizona and Maine, where Clean Elections systems have been in place since 2000, there is high participation by candidates. But that is not because these candidates are "perfect," whatever they may or may not claim. It's because it makes pragmatic sense for them to run with public financing. Politicians aren't angels--far from it. For a public financing system to be effective, it must take into account their self interest.