What's worse: a broken system or a broken promise?

Barack Obama is betting on the former. In a video sent to supporters at 8:35 this morning (above), the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee announced that, unlike Republican rival John McCain, he will refuse public financing for the general election--despite a previous pledge to accept it. "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," said Obama.

"Support" is one way to put it. "Said I would opt into" is another. Asked last September on a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network whether he would "participate in the presidential public financing system" if his "major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign," Obama checked the box marked "yes," then outlined his vision for the 2008 contest. "In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election," he wrote. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election... If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

As expected, McCain, who publicly committed himself last March to accept public funds in the general "if the Democratic nominee agrees to do the same," responded to this morning's announcement with a flash of moral indignation. Calling Obama "just another typical politician who will do and say whatever is most expedient," spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said that the Democratic nominee had "failed" "the true test of a candidate for President"--i.e., "whether he will stand on principle and keep his word to the American people"--and that the "reversal of his promise to participate in the public finance system undermines his call for a new type of politics." Obama, on the other hand, cast the decision as an unfortunate but necessary defense against Republican dirty tricks. "John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs," he said. "And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations."

So who's right?

It's murky--to put it mildly. If Obama had never checked the "yes" box, he'd be in the clear. It's true that our current public financing system is "broken." Although candidates themselves can only spend their allotted $84.1 million, the tax-exempt, unaccountable and completely unregulated "527 groups" that Obama refers to (think 2004's Swiftboaters) can invest unlimited sums in negative advertising designed to ruin an opponent's reputation. The result: a nastier, dirtier election. So far, the candidates have taken different approaches to the problem. At a meeting in Indianapolis on May 2,  "top [Obama] fundraisers... asked his campaign donors to refrain from contributing to liberal independent political organizations in hopes of controlling the tone and message of the general-election campaign." Meanwhile, McCain has adopted a hands-off stance, telling the Boston Herald earlier this month that he "can’t be a referee of every spot run on television." The truth is, neither candidate can control what 527s do on their behalf; the groups simply don't have to answer to federal or state political finance committees. So it's no wonder that they're each following the most profitable path. For McCain, that means accepting a public check (and relying on the RNC to outspend the cash-strapped DNC). For Obama, it means arming himself with private donations--which are expected to top $300 million for the general election.

Unfortunately, Obama did, in fact, check "yes." At the time, he was well-aware of the havoc 527s could wreak; after all, he'd watched the Swiftboat Veterans slime John Kerry. And it was no secret--as Howard Dean had proven more than three years earlier--that the Internet could democratize the process of funding a favored politician. "The presidential public financing system works," Obama told Larry King on Jan. 24, 2007; the next month, he co-sponsored legislation to preserve the current set-up. Since then, the 527s haven't gotten scarier, and the Web hasn't gotten webbier. What's changed is that it's now Obama (not Kerry) who's in danger of being Swiftboated and Obama (not Dean) who's rolling in the dough. So McCain's charge of "expediency" carries some weight.

But that's been clear for awhile now. With its cash flow at record levels, the Obama campaign spent the first few months of 2008 attempting to backtrack, equivocate and wriggle free from what seemed, at the time, like a pledge. After telling the press in Feb. 2007 that Obama, if nominated, would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election"--language that Obama himself echoed nine months later in the MDN survey and reinforced by telling Tim Russert that he would personally sit down with McCain to hammer out a deal--Obama spokesman Bill Burton said this February that "public financing" is "an option that we wanted on the table," but added "there is no pledge." By April, Obama was suggesting, in what amounted to a justification of opting out, that his low-dollar network of online donors effectively represented a "parallel public financing system."

That's why it's not particularly surprising to learn that Obama's pursuit of an agreement, now that he's the nominee, has been less than "aggressive." The official line, according to Burton, is that "our campaign counsels met and it was immediately clear that McCain's campaign had no interest in the possibility of an agreement." But McCain's lawyer Trevor Potter recalls the exchange a little differently. "This is not true!" Potter told ABC News. "I met with [Obama's lawyer] on a different subject... about 10 days ago. During that meeting, he asked what Sen. McCain’s position was on public general election funding, and I said we were for it, and hoped Sen. Obama would participate as well. There was absolutely NO discussion of 'negotiations' about participating—the word was never mentioned." Just to recap: no negotiations, no dedicated meeting, no McCain, no Obama (who promised, remember, to sit down personally with his rival)--and suddenly that's enough for the Dems to declare that there's "no basis for any further exchange." Some tenacity.

Obama, of course, long ago calculated that he could skip public financing. Most voters simply don't care enough about wonky campaign-finance details to hold this slippery maneuver against him for long, so the major plus (an overflowing war chest) easily outweighs the major minus (a bad process story in the dog days of June).  Still, there's no doubt that the decision clashes with his "new kind of politics"--a fact that becomes painfully obvious watching Obama spin it as a matter of principle rather than pragmatism in this morning's video message to supporters. If we "do something that’s never been done before [and] declare our independence from a broken system," he warns, "we'll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds during the final months of this election"--as if we should applaud him for risking life and limb to take the $300 million instead. "Let's build the first general election campaign that's truly funded by the American people," Obama says— ignoring the fact, as the AP notes that "the system he's opting out of is paid for by taxpayers who donate $3 to the fund when they file their tax returns."

Now, don't get me wrong. Obama's massive fundraising machine--which thrives on small checks from 1.5 million individual donors and rejects money from lobbyists and PACs--deserves a ton of praise. It is, simply put, the most democratic in American political history. But as Obama knows, even the fairest private funding operation can't replace a public system. Why? Because the latter is equal. Both candidates get the same multimillion dollar, taxpayer-financed grant--meaning that money is eliminated from the list of potentially decisive factors. And that's the point. Obama has raised an impressive 45 percent of his dinero from donations of less than $200. But the other 55 percent still comes from people giving more--including nearly 30 percent from contributions larger than $2,300.  As the candidate himself put it exactly two years ago, "if we're still getting financed primarily from individual contributions, than those with the most money are still going to have the most influence." 

With that imbalance in mind, a modest proposal: if Obama's own success with private fundraising has convinced him that the public system is "broken," perhaps he should consider pledging to fix it. After all, his machine is the exception, not the rule. Sadly, Obama missed a great opportunity to do just that this morning. Here's hoping he makes the promise before Election Day--and this time, he keeps it.