two things about obama today:
(1) he flip-flopped from his earlier promise concerning public financing of his campaign. earlier, obama promised to accept public money, which meant that he would have to abide by limits on what he could raise himself, and
(2) he has not done anything to stop the current FISA deal from going forward.
on the surface, #1 looks like a bigger deal than #2. #2 is a sin by omission, whereas #1 is an actual broken promise. plus i usually give senator-presidential candidates a pass for not taking action with regard to some proposal in congress when they're running for president. anyone who runs for president and expects to win has to put everything else on the back burner. i've always thought the statistics about missed votes that have been used against all recent presidential candidates who came from the senate (both mccain and obama are vulnerable to those kind of attacks) is not all that serious of a charge. but in this case, #2 bothers me a lot more than #1.
first, #1 is a broken promise and an actual flip-flop, but it still upholds the basic spirit behind the promise. the purpose of the "public financing option" is to encourage candidates to stop being as dependent on big special interests. candidates who voluntarily limited the amount of money they could raise, would get financing from the government, thus making them less dependent on outside interests who write their checks. it's not a bad system to have. earlier in the campaign obama committed to public financing to prove that he would not be beholden to big corporate donations.
but then something happened. obama's coffers swelled largely from small donations from individuals. he's been such an effective fundraiser, he's gotten a lot of ordinary people to send him money without resorting to those big corporate checks. because he doesn't want to turn down money from individual donors, he can break his earlier promise to accept the restrictions that come with public financing and still not accept checks from big corporate donors. the only real downside is that it is a flip-flop, and one that can be (and will be) used by the mccain campaign.
still, i understand why the obama campaign would go the route it has. i think there actually is a big benefit to having a grassroots funded campaign like this. and even though he is breaking his earlier promise, he's not going against the reasoning behind the promise, so i don't think it's that big a deal.
but i am pissed off that obama isn't speaking out against the FISA bill. earlier in the campaign, obama signaled that blocking bullshit FISA reform was a priority of his. he took a break from campaigning in the potomac primary to to vote against the last FISA extension. while i don't hold it against a candidate for missing votes, i do think that the votes they do cast makes a statement about their priorities.
this time obama has clinched the presidential nomination. he is the de facto leader of the democratic party and has more power to stop the FISA bill now than he did last time around. indeed, if obama just made opposition to the bill his talking point for the day, it would probably effectively kill the bill. he wouldn't even have to run back to washington to do it. speaking out would help enormously to defeat it. and this is not just any old issue either. because of the "compromise" on telecom immunity, the bill will effectively end the only lawsuits that could possibly reveal the extent of president bush's criminal conduct.
it's not too late for obama to help kill the bill, but it will be soon. i've already called his office today. but if he were going to do something, he probably would have already. i expect this will turn into a strike mark against my own candidate.
