Leading Democrat Bashes Obama's Hypocrisy on Super PACs

While it is an officially nonpartisan organization, Common Cause, a group that fights for campaign finance reform, has some connections to leading Democrats -- including its chairman former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, its president Bob Edgar, who served as a congressman from Pennsylvania, Pat Schroder who served as a congresswoman from Colorado and made a spectacularly unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination during the 1988 election cycle, and liberal actor Richard Dreyfuss. Despite these ties, Common Cause went on the attack against President Barack Obama on Tuesday after his campaign said it would accept aid from super PACs.

If President Obama had fixed presidential public financing, as he pledged to do in 2008, and seriously gone to bat for more transparency in campaign spending, our political system would be healthier and this would be less of an issue, said Edgar. A strengthened presidential public financing system would not have abolished super PACs, but by helping presidential candidates run competitive campaigns from a base of small donors and matching public funds, we could have made it possible for candidates, including the president, to make good on their stated desire to succeed without aid from super PACs.

Edgar also took aim at how the White House is dispatching staffers to help super PACs aligned with their campaign. The White Houses claim that those officials are not soliciting money is laughable, Edgar said.

While the Obama team said on Monday they would accept the help of super PACs, campaign manager Jim Messina promoted Priorities USA, a super PAC that was formed back in April 2011 by Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, two former Obama White House staffers. Obama has been a critic of super PACs and the Citizens United decision.