The Column

Saint Obama

Wait, he doesn't poop Hope?

I awoke to a shocking news report, delivered via multiple news sources, that the Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, is in fact not the second coming of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus, the Son of God all rolled into one.

"Whoa, whoa!" I said, "That's not what he was selling!"

You can tell Obama is whupping ass in this election because his detractors can't even figure out why they don't like him. He is simultaneously too black, too Muslim, too elitist, too wimpy, too calculating, too vague, to brainy, too talky. I like to drink heavily and watch Sean Hannity on FOX News because he can never figure out a consistent narrative for why the public should fear Barack Obama. This is all the Republicans have to run on: Perpetuate the Fear of a black elitist possible-Muslim. At least with their latest ammunition, they (kinda) have a point.

Yes, Barack turned down public financing for his campaign, opting instead for the $875 quadrillionbajillion he's going to bring in on his own for the November election. This is relevant only because he claimed to be a staunch supporter of the public financing system and as a primary candidate promised he would finance his campaign publicly, thus negating the supernatural powers of the change-beams that emanate straight from his eyes, or, Hope Orbs.

The funny part about Barack's decision is that the media, John McCain and the Republicans are acting like this is a complete surprise. Anyone paying even an iota of attention to the way Obama's campaign was raking in money hand-over-fist during the primary could see this coming. He had a lose-lose decision to make, but there was really no decision.

Obama did what anyone would do (McCain included). Had he gone the other way, sticking to his guns, giving up the most revolutionary fundraising machines in the history of politics and handicapping himself in the general election, the same pundits who are calling him a fake would have been calling him a pussy instead.

I can see Bill O'Reilly now: "How are we supposed to trust this guy to handle the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran when he can't even stand up to the campaign finance wing of the left?" (I should totally write for The O'Reilly Factor!)

To be fair, Obama has a point when he says that his small donor appeal is a relatively democratizing force in campaign fundraising. About half his money comes from typical Democratic donors (trial lawyers, bankers, Hollywood), and the other half from small donors giving less than $200. Although he relies on the same types of bundlers that Hillary Clinton did (and he is now tapping hers), his small donor base has given him unprecedented freedom from big-money influence. In an interview on NPR Ben Smith of Politico testified that interest groups have mounting concern that they will not have any degree of access in an Obama administration. In other words, despite this fudging of his principles, Obama has invented a way he and his campaign can operate outside of the typical Washington game. So good for him (kinda).

Obama may be avoiding the worst parts of the money system, but he also effectively killed the idea of public financing for a generation, and now experts think his campaign will raise $500 million, which is a number so absurd it makes the campaigns of George W. Bush look like a shoestring state senate race in Delaware.

There are a couple of things Barack can do to mitigate this. The first: Both he and John McCain should make available a list of specific information about their bundlers. Obama talks about transparency. This is how to do it. Where's the money coming from and who's putting it together? Second, if and when he's elected president, he should pursue meaningful campaign finance reform immediately and as far away from the next election season as possible.

More distressing to me than the public financing issue, however, is the reaction to it. As I said, this entire thing was a foregone conclusion months ago, yet Obama supporters have tried to spin this as the Benevolent One coming out of the clouds and ordaining a new way of running a campaign. They remind me eerily of those dedicated Bushies of '04 that did not see a problem with a president who had so clearly bullshitted his way into office, wrecked the country, and then wanted to come back for seconds.

Obama made a hard-headed political decision, a tactical calculation that will help him win the election. There is no high-road moral argument, no virtue here other than the virtue of what he can do with the money, which is use the cash to run in all 50 states (rather than a typical Democratic presidential campaign, which takes place in only Ohio and Florida), sweep into office in a landslide and bring with him not only a Democratic House and Senate but more importantly, a mandate to make the kind of change he keeps talking about.

More distressing is Obama's clear dash to the center: Loving up the Second Amendment, supporting the Supreme Court's decision on capital punishment, acquiescing on FISA, proposing an expansion of Bush's faith-based charity initiative. None of these are particularly outside of Obama's MO, but his choice to emphasize them has led to quite a bit of eye-rolling in the Markley household (which consists of five liberal white guys who like their beer cheap and their Sean Hannity in HD, so admittedly not a very good demographic sample).

Voters tend to view politicians either in halos or with pitchforks. Thus every human flaw becomes amplified and resonates louder than our own. Bill Clinton took a lot of shit for doing something that roughly half of all people in marriages do at least once if not regularly (although usually not with a cigar; that's weird).

Politicians are not meant to be our moral arbiters or walk on any kind of liquid surface. They will make mistakes, human calculations to advance their cause and generally just act like the same douche bags we all are.

Barack Obama is no different—although I do believe he's better than most. More than where he gets his money, he has demonstrated throughout his campaign that he won't take easy political bait. I can think of numerous occasions during his race against Hillary Clinton when he could have massacred her for some of her behavior but didn't. Upon taking the nomination, he shut down the PAC money coming into the Democratic National Committee and swore off the help of 527s. Furthermore, he has wed on-line activism with grassroots organization, creating a network that makes his campaign as impressive in Casper, Wyoming as it is in Chicago, Illinois. With the sheer infrastructure of volunteers and small contributors, he has built a framework for participatory democracy that this country has never—let me repeat that word: never—seen before.

His supporters (including me, of course) would love to believe that this means he is somehow beyond the needs of the typical politician. He doesn't have to put out TV adds where he uses as many trite politi-speak clichés that Middle America supposedly loves as he can stuff into a sentence, yet he does. He doesn't have to put together a campaign team of marketing and advertising and media-crafting pros and spinners and dodgers and weavers, but he does. He shouldn't have to fall into the tired, pathetic rhythms of a candidate playing to the center, running a safe campaign just to get elected, but he will.

Campaigning has become a multi-million dollar industry, and now there are people you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to think up phrases like "values I got straight from the Heartland" and tell you which tie makes you look like you can answer a phone at 3 a.m. and bomb a particular country to blood and rubble. This is the bullshit it takes to actually win a presidential campaign. If you ignore it, than you're probably Ralph Nader (or at least Dennis Kucinich).

The question is how well Obama can resist the trappings of the permanent campaign once in office. Everyone's a reformer when he or she gets to Washington. They question is what they do after they arrive.