Political Frenzy

Today Senator McCain attacked Senator Obama on public election financing. McCain’s camp said that last spring Obama’s campaign said Obama would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly-financed general election.”

Campaigns that are publicly financed means that each campaign would receive around $85 million from a taxpayer financed fund. But if they accept it they are not allowed to raise money elsewhere.

McCain said that Obama should “keep his word to the American people.”

First of all, Obama isn’t the nominee yet, and neither is McCain. So let’s not count the chickens before they hatch (even though on the Republican egg I can see the beak). Secondly an attack on Obama is good news for Barack’s campaign because that shows that the Republicans are already counting on him winning the nomination.

The thing that I don’t like about this type of attack is that Obama has said nothing about using public financing during the general election. By McCain challenging something Obama has said nothing about it makes it look like Obama has already said he won’t use public financing. Ahhh classic politics.

Let’s be honest here, the only reason McCain has brought this up is because he knows he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at raising even half the money Obama would. In January Obama raised over $32 million dollars, mostly from small donations. When looking at cash each campaign has on hand, it is not surprise. Obama has over $18 million while McCain has just about $3 million.

If the candidates agreed to both use public financing it would take away a huge advantage from Obama. When his campaign made that comment last spring I’m sure they didn’t realize that they would become a money machine in 2008.

If Obama does receive the nomination he has a huge decision to make. Should he reject his proposal of using public financing and dominate McCain with his millions. Or should he stick to his word and have a level playing field with McCain?

The smart thing for him to do would be to reject the public financing and take the wrath that comes with a flip-flop. McCain won’t have much money to get the message out that Obama flip-flopped in the first place.