FEC Moves Toward Granting Obama's Request
By Angela Dorazio
Posted on Wed Feb 28, 2007 at 05:06:33 PM EST
Late last Thursday, Feb. 22, the Federal Elections Commission released a draft Advisory Opinion in response to Sen. Barack Obama's request to provisionally raise money for the general election while maintaining the option of returning those funds, should he get the Democratic nomination, in order to accept public funds. The drafted opinion, which must be approved by the Commission, grants Sen. Obama's request provided that he keep private funds in a separate account not to be used for any purpose and that he return the contributions in full if he chooses to ultimately take public funds. The Commission is scheduled to meet tomorrow, March 1, to discuss the opinion.
This opinion, which a Washington Post editorial says is very likely to be approved by the Commission, is significant in two important ways. First, if it is approved, as a matter of precedent, it will allow future candidates to preserve the public financing system the way that Sen. Obama would. Second, and as the Post editorial notes, this new option available to candidates for the 2008 election may actually materialize, as it was suggested by one of the front-runners in the race:
The FEC's positive reaction yesterday offers a glimmer of hope that 2008 will not become the first presidential election since the Watergate scandal to be fully financed by private funds. The system of providing federal matching funds during the primaries is dead, a victim of woefully outdated spending limits; none of the leading candidates participated in the system in 2004, and none is expected to this time around. But 2008 would be the first election in which candidates turn down matching funds for the general election as well. The result might be as much as $1 billion in combined spending, with enormous amounts of the candidates' time devoted to raising money rather than meeting voters.
The editors at the Post are absolutely right. This presidential election could potentially be the costliest one in history. This means, more than ever, that the time spent raising millions upon millions of dollars is time unspent on listening and responding to constituents. Which is more important to a politician? Or put a better way: Which should be more important to a politician?
The editorial also brings to light a larger issue: the archaicism of the current presidential public financing system. The system must undergo drastic changes in order to compel candidates to use it. No one is going to use a system with such outdated and low spending limits that it's virtually impossible to be a viable candidate. As I wrote in last week's blog, even though Sen. Obama's plan is not the best solution for correcting the problems with the presidential public financing system, he was able to come up with a creative way to get around the fact that no one is moving to update this system. But he'll still be collecting private contributions as a backup option; the future of public financing must be a system in which candidates opt into it initially and then run a campaign based on public funds from the outset.
The Washington Post urges other candidates to get on-board with Obama "and pledge, if they win the nomination, to help control the campaign arms race." And make no mistake about it: It IS an arms race, and public financing is the only way to ensure a fair finish.
Tags: barack obama, public financing, clean elections, presidential race 2008 (all tags)
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