McCain plans $400M campaign despite Public Financing

Wow.  $400 million is A LOT of money, but that is how much McCain’s campaign manager says the campaing is budgeting for during the election (both primary and general).  This is not all his own money, obviously, especially since McCain has chosen to keep his promise to accept public financing.  The plan looks as follows:

The McCain campaign expects to benefit from the Republican National Committee’s widening fundraising edge over the Democratic National Committee. The party committees are allowed to coordinate spending with their presidential nominees, as well as make independent, uncoordinated expenditures.

At the end of May, the RNC had more than ten times as much money in the bank as the DNC — $40.6 million to $4.4 million. June financial reports are due with the Federal Election Commission on July 20.

Both parties also have formed joint fundraising accounts with their candidates. Davis said the McCain Victory 2008 committee had $67.8 million in the bank at the end of June. Combined with McCain’s own war chest, the Arizona senator now has about $94.5 million as he prepares to enter the general election. (Full article)

With Obama opting out of public financing, there has been a lot of debate about the system and whether it works or not.

I am not in support of Obama opting out of the public financing system.  He said earlier in the primary campaign that he would use it, but it seems that once he fell into a bunch of money he changed his mind.   I don’t follow everything he says about everything, but it seems hypocrtical to me for him to make such a drastic change and abondon a system he said was working to bring new people into the fold.  As McCain so likes to put it, Obama ‘checked yes’ in a survey in the beginning of the primary system.  Newsweek had a good column on why he changed his mind:

Unfortunately, Obama did, in fact, check “yes.” At the time, he was well-aware of the havoc 527s could wreak; after all, he’d watched the Swiftboat Veterans slime John Kerry. And it was no secret–as Howard Dean had proven more than three years earlier–that the Internet could democratize the process of funding a favored politician. “The presidential public financing system works,” Obama told Larry King on Jan. 24, 2007; the next month, he co-sponsored legislation to preserve the current set-up. Since then, the 527s haven’t gotten scarier, and the Web hasn’t gotten webbier. What’s changed is that it’s now Obama (not Kerry) who’s in danger of being Swiftboated and Obama (not Dean) who’s rolling in the dough. So McCain’s charge of “expediency” carries some weight.  (Full Article)

Whle I am not proud of Obama’s decision, the entire point of this post is that the Republicans have indeed shown how the system is broken.  If McCain can opt into the public financing system and still plan an overall $400M campaign, then we have some serious tweaking to perform.  Even in the fall, when he can’t fundraise directly at all, the plan is for more $200M between his campaign and the RNC.  And that certainly won’t include 527c groups which attack their opponent without any sense of responsibilty (swiftboaters).

I suppose the moral of this story is that our campaign finance laws are indeed broken.  But Obama knew that when he said he’d participate and I find a broken promise worse than a broken system.  If you’re really up for an insprirational story on campaign finance, you should check out ‘Run Granny Run’.  It’s a documentary on Dorris “Granny D” Haddick, a 94 year old woman who ran as the Democratic Senate Candidate in 2004 in New Hampshire in 2004.  In 1999, at 89 years old, she walked across the country in protest of campaign finance and helped pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms.  It’s great documentary from HBO.

As always, thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts!