Where is the outcry?

Many have forgotten the promise that Barack Obama had made early on in this election: he had promised to accept public financing for his campaign if his opponent did so as well. McCain played Obama’s hand by agreeing to accept public financing, but as it turns out, Obama was merely bluffing. With the opportunity to raise many more millions through private fundraising, as he has done, he would have been foolish to limit his campaign.

The main problem here is not with Obama’s decision to raise funds privately—I personally feel that public financing should not exist—but with how the mainstream media has covered Obama’s record-breaking fundraising. While in the past many Republicans have been accused of buying elections, as they are typically the candidates with the bigger purse strings, very few times has anyone in the mainstream media leveled this accusation against Obama. This double standard is so obvious that it is just sickening. Furthermore, and much more troubling, is that his agreement to raise funds privately shows deep contradictions in his political and economic philosophy.

Obama’s campaign raised $150 million in the month of September, more than doubling the previous record of $66 million, set by Obama’s campaign in August. John McCain, by comparison, is permitted to spend only $78 million over the course of September and October. George W. Bush was criticized for attempting to buy the election in both 2000 and 2004 when his funds greatly exceeded those of his opponents, Al Gore and John Kerry respectively. However, no such criticism has taken root in the media portrayal of Obama’s campaign, despite the fact that the inequality between the campaigns finances is significantly greater in this election than at nearly any point in past presidential history.

Rather, Obama is being lauded for his ability to reach out to such an extensive network of Americans and his use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, to break new ground in fundraising. The inability of the mainstream media to provide any meaningful criticism, or at least to be consistent and criticize him for taking the very same actions they have criticized Republican candidates for in the past, shows the obvious liberal bias.

More significantly, though, Obama’s refusal of public funds contradicts much of his political and economic rhetoric. Throughout his campaign Obama has attacked free markets as dangerous ones which inevitably lead to corruption, and the type of economic failure we are currently experiencing. He has offered government regulation and other policies as solutions to these problems supposedly posed by free markets and unfettered capitalism. However, when it comes to his own campaign, Obama has had no qualms about using the power of free markets to his advantage.

Many may be confused by my connection of free markets, which is generally conceived as the free ability to produce, buy, and sell goods, and a presidential election. However, choosing to donate to a specific candidate is a logical extension of the marketplace, as politicians offer goods and services to their “consumers,” or voters. Each citizen places his own price on how much he values the goods and services being offered by one candidate, and donates accordingly. What campaign finance reform laws and public financing attempt to do is to level the playing field, and, as Obama so (in)famously stated to Joe the plumber, “spread the wealth.” Despite such rhetoric, Obama has refused to do exactly what he has urged others to do by failing to accept public finances.

Ironically enough, he has invoked the power of the free market to run a campaign in which he urges its destruction.