Having condemned the Citizens United decision and having bashed super PACs, President Barack Obama has flipped on the matter as his campaign manager gave a thumbs up to super PACs that will support the Democrat incumbent in the 2012 election.
The stakes are too important to play by two different sets of rules, Jim Messina, Obamas campaign manager, wrote to supporters late on Monday. If we fail to act, we concede this election to a small group of powerful people intent on removing the president at any cost.
Messina forwarded a blog piece he wrote earlier in the day in which he warned of the dangerous trend toward a political system increasingly dominated by big-money interests with disproportionate power to spend freely to influence our elections and our government, adding it's a trend the president has fought against, coming into office with a mission to limit special-interest influence in Washington.
Noting that Obama opposed the Citizens United decision and understood that with the dramatic growth in opportunities to raise and spend unlimited special-interest money we would see new strategies to hide it from public view, Messina went on about how the Democrat incumbent wants to change the law. After bemoaning how allies of Mitt Romney and other Republicans have raised money through super PACs, Messina insisted they could not have a scenario where the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm."
Messina offered a plug to Priorities USA, a super PAC allied with Obama. Priorities USA was formed in April 2011 by Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, two former Obama White House staffers.
The presidents decision to ally his re-election campaign with super PACs garnered fierce condemnation from both the left and the right on Tuesday.
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 an 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 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.
Obamas decision to ally himself with super PACs also drew the fire of two staffers of the Public Campaign Action Fund, which bills itself as a campaign finance watchdog. Nick Nyhart, the executive director of the fund, and David Donnelly, its national campaigns director, issued a statement on Tuesday questioning the presidents decision.
The pro-special interest decisions by the Roberts Court and the inevitable actions by presidential candidates and groups to take advantage of them means that financing of the 2012 election will be squarely in the hands of big check-writing billionaires and corporate interests, Nyhart and Donnelly wrote.
What separates the candidates now is what they will do in the near term and after the election to fix it, they added. Mitt Romney has said he wants even more special-interest money flowing directly into campaign war chests. President Obama should sharply distinguish his vision from his potential opponent by campaigning on a platform of 'elections of, by, and for the people' all the people. Such a platform means a muscular 'all of the above' program: a small-donor driven campaign system, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, no big-money nominees to the Supreme Court, increased disclosure, and a cop on the beat at the FEC to strictly police our campaign finance laws.
Its halftime in America and who controls our democracy is at stake. If President Obama is willing to fix Detroit, why not our elections? Nyhart and Donnelly asked.
Obama also drew the fire of leading Republicans on Tuesday. The Republican National Committee ran a Web ad, attacking the Democrat incumbent for flipping on the issue.
In 2010, President Obama decried these outside groups as a threat to our democracy, yet, with his job on the line, he changed his position, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday. With enthusiasm for his campaign lagging, Barack Obama is going to have to do everything in his power to try and mask three years of failed economic policies.
Todays announcement is more evidence that this president will do and say anything to get re-elected, Priebus added. The Obama of hope and change is no more. Hes in full-campaign mode, focused on saving his own job.
Former Gov. Buddy Roemer of Louisiana, a dark-horse candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, also weighed in on the matter. Roemer, who also served as a congressman, has made campaign finance reform one of the cornerstones of his presidential bid, refusing to accept donations of more than $100.
Being president requires bold leadership on issues you believe in, and until recently I thought the president, like me, believed in this one, Roemer said. Just two weeks ago, President Obama decried the corrosive influence of money in politics in his State of the Union address, and I was happy to hear him talking about my top issue.Two years ago, when the Supreme Court announced the Citizens United decision, which has taken the potential for corruption in Washington to a whole new level, President Obama called them out on it, and rightfully so. So why the sudden change? Simple. We have an unwritten law that states, he with the most money wins. Is that how we pick our president, by how much money they can raise?
Instead of leading, Mr. Obama is following the pack, his campaign manager making excuses that if the other candidates are doing it, they should too, Roemer added. Follow the money, and it will all make sense. I thought you were better than that, Mr. President.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
