I just saw John McCain very gravely lamenting Barack Obama’s decision not to accept public financing for the general election campaign and opining about what it says about Obama’s ethics and trustworthiness. And I must confess that I’m a little confused why more Democrats are not hitting this preening peacock with the fact that he is as we speak breaking the campaign finance laws and specifically breaking the law on accepting public financing. Having opted into the system and gotten the advantage of it he’s now spending freely in defiance of the caps he agreed not to spend over. Not a commitment to Common Cause to try to come to deal, but a legally binding commitment to stay within the public system for the primaries (which, by FEC rules, continues through the nominating conventions).
It’s almost surreal that McCain is being allowed to get on his high horse on anything remotely connected to the public financing system.
You can say the press should be hitting him on this. But the truth is that this will only become an issue, if Democrats and Obama-surrogates make it an issue. The guy is not only ‘breaking his word’ he’s breaking the law. But he’s so awash in his own self-righteousness that I’m not even sure this counts as hypocrisy — at least conscious hypocrisy — since just as is the case with the lobbyists he surrounds himself with I think his self-righteousness makes it all invisible to him.
Here’s the video …
