Ground Game

The media and the two presidential campaigns are swept up in a debate today over whether Barack Obama broke his word by opting out of the public financing system for the general election. Yesterday, the argument was technically won by McCain. But the upside for Team Obama is that very few low intensity voters seem to feel strongly about the campaign finance issue and there's no history of a single-issue voting bloc either. After all, if there was, we'd probably be marking the end of McCain's second term, not his fight to start his first.

Ultimately, this should be good news for McCain, who has come under criticism from liberal blogs, who allege that he is continuing to break the CFR laws during the primary season, which technically continues until this summer's conventions.



Today, the argument has shifted somewhat. The best conventional wisdom understands that Obama did this because it was the most pragmatic move for him to make. As David Brooks writes, it would  cause more concern if Obama were to sacrifice his greatest campaign advantage to keep a "promise" that almost no one cares about. But it also fits the growing meme that he will sacrifice allies and principles if it helps further his political ambition.

To that end, Rick Klein, author of ABC's The Note, says Obama is Bush, McCain is Kerry:

It's Barack Obama who is running for George Bush's third term, while John McCain just might be pursuing John Kerry's first.

Obama also takes some harsh criticism from the Washington Post editorial pages. They go after McCain a little too, but not until the end of the piece.

While the Post editorial may be a little heavy-handed, it's not quite as bad as Keith Olbermann's distorted take on the debate last night. Olbermann danced around the facts to argue that Obama had never offered to engage in a discussion with McCain about public financing, when multiple sources indicate otherwise.

OLBERMANN:  Mr. McCain has tried to make this about Obama's word and it sounded a little bit like, I don't know, the bride jolted that the altar or something here.  But it seems that Obama fulfilled that word, he agreed to negotiate the thing with McCain, obviously, that didn't work.  Is the McCain version of this dependent on really severe oversimplification of this whole thing?

If Olbermann wanted to make a more convincing argument, he should have followed the lead of progressive blogs like Talking Points Memo, who focus on McCain's alleged own transgressions with real evidence, rather than making a weak theoretical argument. After all, a broken law should be more damning than a broken promise.

UPDATE: Robert A. George has an excellent post railing against both candidates, the "frick and frack" of reform.