Awash in Green (Ink?)

In the real-world practice of politics, both sides are willing to do whatever it takes to raise enough money to win. The difference is that Republicans, having rarely backed a campaign finance rule, feel no squeamishness on this score. Democrats do — or at least they worry about being labeled hypocrites for exploiting the very campaign finance loopholes they once derided. As a result, they often end up lagging in the fundraising game du jour, accused of being two-faced, or both.

You can already see this dynamic being played out in the 2012 campaign. First, and timely as the president conducts a West Coast fundraising swing, there is the uncomfortable matter of Barack Obama as the Billion Dollar Man. In the 2008 campaign, Obama became the first major-party candidate since the presidential public financing system was created in the aftermath of Watergate to fuel his race entirely with private money. Obama collected an astonishing $750 million, a cool $100 million more than all the presidential candidates combined raised in 2004.

What made this a little tricky was that Obama had declared himself an advocate of the public financing system. Even trickier: He had promised to take public funds for the general election if his opponent agreed to do the same. As part of his big “never mind,” Candidate Obama promised that President Obama would work hard to fix the system he was helping to bust. “I am firmly committed to reforming the system as president, so that it’s viable in today’s campaign climate,” Obama wrote in a June 2008 op-ed in USA Today. This overhaul, the Obama campaign told The Boston Globe that November, would be a “priority as president.”
~ from The Money Pit by Ruth Marcus ~

Columns, essays and article of this ilk really irritate me. The writer correctly points out that candidate Barack Obama said one thing and did another. He said he would he would accept public funds if John McCain would agree to public financing as well. McCain did agree and then Obama didn't follow through.

Again, as a presidential candidate, Obama pledged to work to make the campaign finance system more fair and equitable, yet, as the elected president, he hasn't touched the issue with a ten foot pole.

Marcus also points out that, after waylaying the GOP for its use of Super PACs in 2010, the Democrats are setting up all sorts of Supers PACs for 2012.

But here's the thing. After underscoring that Obama and the Democrats are supreme hypocrites for choosing to employ tactics and strategies in 2012 that they either reneged on or declared were unethical in 2010, she somehow arrives at the point in which she maintains that the Democrats aren't as bad as the GOP in this regard.

In my book, if you make a great show by declaring something to be wrong and then you turn around to do it yourself, you are worse or, at least, no better than those you originally accused. And let's face it, in the realm of politics, both mainstream political parties pander to the moneyed interests. They are both equally slimy!