Oracle: Obama must step on campaign finance

Tim Barnhart, who blogs under the moniker of the St. Louis Oracle, sent me an e-mail yesterday with a post he made asking President Barack Obama to answer questions on campaign finance issues.

From the post:

I broach this subject with mixed emotions. Barack Obama is pro-choice, pro-union, pro-gay rights, pro-gun-control, pro-civil liberties and anti-war; in short, a huge improvement over George W. Bush and a better choice than John McCain. I am glad he is president. But true progressives are just as concerned about the fairness of the process as the bottom-line results.

I hate it when elections are won and lost based upon the amount of money available to the candidates. I support public financing of campaigns, and I was deeply disappointed when Obama, after having pledged to run a publicly financed general election campaign (subject to all of its limitations), reneged and instead ran a campaign bankrolled by a record amount of cash. No previous major party candidate - not even Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush - had ever done that. Compared to the prior election (the old record), Obama’s fundraising made Bush look like a piker, and he more than doubled what fellow Democrat John Kerry had raised. Obama’s victory is due in no small part to his outspending his legally constrained opponent in every battleground state during the crucial final weeks of the campaign. Even Obama’s fantastic grassroots and GOTV efforts were tainted by his inflated financial ability to hire more people and open more field offices. That’s not how elections are supposed to be won, even when the result happens to be good.

Read the rest of the post here.

If anybody out there in the Missouri political universe wants to submit guest commentary, feel free to send me an e-mail.