mccain’s uphill fight against irrelevance

by Cherry Vichette

Published: April 14, 2008

Obama is bringing in cash at record levels: $55 million in February and $40 million in March. Meanwhile, McCain continues to harp on him for a pledge he never, I repeat, never made to accept public funds in the general election.

McCain’s most recent diatribe included the following bogus accusation:

“The fact is that he (Obama) is saying one thing and he’s doing another. I mean, that’s indisputable.”

Actually John, it’s disputable. As a matter of fact, it’s more than disputable, it’s false.

On February 1, 2007, Obama’s lawyers submitted a question to the FEC which asked if the campaign could “provisionally raise funds for the general election but retain the option” of returning the donations if the opposing candidate agreed to use public funds during the general election. The FEC confirmed that such an option was viable, and no further commitments nor inquiries were made by the Obama camp.

The closest thing to a promise to campaign under the limitations of public funding was a statement made on February 28, 2007 by Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton, wherein in he conceded to a reporter from Politico that “if the Republican agreed to opt-in to the public financing system, it would be something we would explore.”

At most Obama has committed himself to “explore” the option of publicly financing his campaign. Well, in all sincerity I feel that Obama has kept his pledge to the American people. He has explored the option of public funding and determined that it would severely limit his ability to pummel his opponent in November.

Option explored; option rejected; promise kept. Why all the debate?

Now I will concede the point that when the media interpreted his inquiry and his team’s subsequent allusions to the possibilities of a publicly funded campaign to mean that he was committed to the use of public funds, Obama did nothing to dispel the myth. Why didn’t he? Because it created a great storyline that, juxtaposed with the well-funded, well-connected Clinton camp, made him out to be a populist hero. The story fit the campaign’s image and he let the media run with it.

What a criminal! Impeach Obama!

He allowed a headline-hungry media to create bogus headlines because the editors at major news organizations the world over didn’t bother to check the facts. And now McCain can’t stop talking about it. The way he rants you would think that Obama had descended from Mt. Sinai and commanded all candidates for the presidency of the United States to use public funds. It’s ridiculous.

If McCain wants to win in November, he needs to stop attacking the left’s golden child and start relevanting himself.

Relevanting: rel-e-vant-ing (verb) - the act of using novel ideas like policy positions to make one’s campaign relevant instead of leveling baseless accusations against ones opponent.

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