President Obama Was The Only Candidate Who Could Afford To Denounce Super PACs, Yet He Won’t

President Obama has decided to give his blessing to Priorities USA, an “unaffiliated” Super PAC that will raise money on his behalf. Unaffiliated in the legal sense — the President will not correspond with the group as required by law. But, obviously, by giving his public blessing Priorities USA will be far more likely to raise funds from big money Democratic donors. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with this. It’s legal, and GOP candidates are already using Super PACs to their full advantage. But there is something very wrong with this. Let President Obama tell you in his own words, circa the State of the Union in January 2010:

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign companies – to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

Obama supporters have already started the requisite circling of the wagons, claiming that even though the President was against creation of Super PACs (which is true but makes this decision worse, not better), he has no choice since his GOP competition will be using Super PACs with impunity. That’s wrong on a few accounts:

(1) Long before the president put his blessing on SuperPacs, analysts estimated the Obama reelection machine would raise $1 billion — the highest total ever raised in campaign history, which beats the previous total of $750 million that Obama set in 2008. To put that in perspective, $750 million is more than the combined total that George W. Bush and John Kerry raised in 2004.

(2) It would be rare for an incumbent president to be out-raised financially. In fact, it’s very likely that it has never been done before. And it’s not likely to happen to President Obama — as of August 2011 he had done more fundraisers for himself, Democratic committees or candidates, than the five presidents who preceded him.

(3) President Obama has yet to start his reelection campaign in earnest yet has already raised over $125 million, more than double that of his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, and has $81 million in cash on hand, four times that of Mitt Romney.

Bending the Law?

Moreover, sitting cabinet officials will speak at Priorities USA engagements with one caveat: they won’t directly raise money. However, flying federal officials around on the taxpayers’ dime for political purposes is why the Hatch Act, which exists to prevent the use of federal tax dollars for campaigning purposes, was created. Already the administration has gotten very close to the line. The LA Times reviewed fundraisers (not affiliated with Priorities USA, but otherwise Democratic) where cabinet officials have appeared and found “[s]ome people who have attended recent fundraisers described situations that came close to the [legal] limit.” Let’s hope the Obama Administration, for their sake, is better at gauging where, exactly, that line is than the George W. Bush Administration — whom the Office of Special Counsel found violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions and even had a campaign agenda dotted with appearances by cabinet members. To be clear, plenty of past administrations have grappled with the nuances of following the Hatch Act. The difference is none of those administrations had the ability to raise the kind of money President Obama is able to raise.

Which leads to the what President Obama could have afforded to do concerning Super PACs: vowed not to support or receive money from Super PACs. He could have denounced their use and continued (in earnest) to push for changes in election law that would have nullified the Citizens United decision. But he didn’t. And does one really think he’ll make it a priority to change it after the election? If so, how could Congress take him seriously? What effect will his hypocrisy have? Very little.

Sure, the GOP can lash out and say Obama has gone back on his word but that won’t mean much to an independent voter that looks askance at what the entire political system has become: pay for play. And progressives won’t take Obama to task — not when so much is at stake and the election is around the corner. So to President Obama it was a net win. Only principle lost. But it’s been losing for a long time anyway.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.