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.
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