When Barack Obama changes his mind about opting out of public financing restrictions for the Presidential election, does that make him a “MAVERICK” on the issue of campaign finance reform?
Keeping track of the double standard in this years election is going to be quite a task.
When Sen. McCain “flip-flops” on every issue from tax cuts to reproductive rights to torture, he’s a “MAVERICK!”.
When Sen. Obama changes his mind, he’s a “flip-flopper!”.
Go figure.
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No, Obama is not a maverick, he’s not a flip-flopper, he’s a hypocrite. The NY Times, the Washington Post and even the Milwaukee Journal are saying so editorially. And so the “new kind of politician” is revealed as another shabby and cynical Chicago Machine pol. Despite many promises and many speeches in support of public financing, Obama threw it under the bus once he realized where the big bucks really were.
Mark Shields take Obama to task on PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june08/sbdrilling_06-20.html
Shields thinks it’s a flip-flop. But don’t worry, the Journal, the NY Times, the Washington Post and Mark Shields might be appalled by Obama’s cynicism but it won’t stop them from endorsing him come November.
The change is stance on funding was disconcerting. If he doesn’t vote against the telcom get out of jail free bill, I’ll definitely be voting for someone else (though not McCain) this fall.
The “big bucks” being in millions of Americans giving small amounts of money.
Yeah but a lot of it is going to media conclomerates. This is a shame in that a lot of it is spent on uninformative 30 second tv spots (and doubly bad in that some television air time should be accessible to candidates for only the cost of production as part of their public service obligations).
Also by rejecting public funds, he is also going to want money from large sources as well as small sources. So it will be interesting to see if this appears to influence him on the telecom immunity bill. My bet is this time around he will do what Hillary did previously and claim he is too busy campaigning to vote.
Bruno, but now you’re talking about your concern with the flow of where money is going FROM the campaign. I’m talking about where the money is coming INTO the campaign from.
Dan,
Obama has spent most of his political career talking about how much he believes in public financing (it’s all there, do a little googling). But as soon as he realized where the big bucks were he threw public financing under the bus. He’s got an army of small donors and a ton of big money bundlers, so his decision was easy; he knows that people like you will rationalize that decision and even his hypocrisy.
He sold out public financing, what else will he sell out? FISA maybe?
What this example shows me is that Obama isn’t willing to stand on his principles (at least in some cases) in order to accomplish something. Compare him to Feingold who actually stuck to his principles when the republicans were sending in lots of money to defeat him. Obama will certainly be better for the country than McCain, but he appears to only be an ordinary politician. It would be nice to actually get a good (as in good for the country, not necessarily good at getting elected) in the top slot again (see Washington) sometime.
Well he ended up voting for both cloture and for the bill in the end.
I just don’t see him as being enough better than McCain to earn my vote, so I’ll be voting for a Green or Libertarian candidate for President this fall.
Oops. I forgot some context. I am referring to the FISA bill that grants telecoms retroactive immunity and expanded warrantless wiretaping powers to the executive branch. This was another issue upon which Obama has changed his position.
I guess he should have just not voted on the issue like the other Presidential candidate and avoided the whole mess.
I think we all know where McCain stands, despite his not voting. IMO McCain is wrong. What was disappointing was that Obama could have used his position to block the bill. His one vote wouldn’t have made the difference, but as the presumptive nominee I would expect that he could have gotten enough senators to do the right thing so that a filibuster could have been used to block the bill.