WASHINGTON (AFP) — Critics on Friday lined up to take a swing at Democrat Barck Obama's decision to reject public financing for his presidential campaign.
In February, Obama said: "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."
But on Thursday he said the system was "broken" and the stakes were too high to allow unrestrained spending by the Republican Party and right-wing groups on behalf of his Republican rival John McCain.
The move allows Obama to spend far more than the US-Treasury-mandated limit of 85 million dollars.
Obama has raised a stunning 265 million dollars so far in his presidential bid, smashing all records for this stage of the race and far beyond the 96 million raised by McCain, who said he will take government funds.
Editorials in both The Washington Post and The New York Times criticize the Illinois senator for shifting positions.
"Given Mr. Obama's earlier pledge ... his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take," opined the Post.
Obama "had an opportunity here to demonstrate that he really is a different kind of politician," the daily wrote. "He made a different choice, and anyone can understand why: he's going to raise a ton of money."
The New York Times wrote that the excitement underpinning Obama's campaign "rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election."
Times conservative columnist David Brooks nicknamed Obama "Fast Eddie," after a brilliant and conniving pool shark in a 1960s Paul Newman movie.
"There is Dr. Barack the high-minded ... but then on the other side, there's 'Fast Eddie' Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol," writes Brooks.
He describes Obama as "the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he's too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.
"Republican keep calling him naive," writes Brooks, who believes instead that Obama is "the most effectively political creature we've seen in decades.
"Even Bill Clinton wasn't smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics," the columnist wrote.
Obama is the first presidential candidate to reject public funds and its restrictions since they were enacted after the 1976 Watergate scandal.
"It's a mistake," said Senator Russell Feingold, co-sponsor of a campaign finance reform bill, told the Post. "I look forward to working on this and a wide range of other reform issues with him when he becomes president."
Obama's campaign believes that collecting small amounts of donations from millions of contributors, mostly on the Internet, is a better campaign financing system. Some 1.5 million supporters have already sent contributions with the click of a mouse.
Obama's campaign has describe this as "a new kind of politics," outside of the influence of special interest groups.
The Times editorial board was not convinced. "So far, however, the Web phenomenon remains unique to Mr Obama and is no reason to set the dangerous precedent of fully scrapping public financing," the paper said.
But with exploding campaign finance expenses, "the reality is that the amount of money that comes from the government is not enough to run a modern presidential campaign," Larry Makinson, a consultant to the Center for Responsive Politics, told the New York Times.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
