Andrew Koontz of Princeton
Barack Obama’s election as our nation’s next president has been hailed as a new beginning. His election is a historic first — the first African-American ever elected chief executive of the United States. But while President-elect Obama’s win is a first, John McCain’s loss is an important “last.” Sen. McCain will likely be the last presidential candidate to abide by the public financing reforms enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Much was made of Sen. Obama’s decision to opt out of public financing, which in the final stages of the campaign would have capped his spending at $84 million, a cap that Sen. McCain, a stalwart supporter of campaign finance reform, abided by, to his disadvantage. In the final weeks, Sen. Obama outspent Sen. McCain by heavy margins, with enough cash left over in the last days of the campaign to purchase a 30-minute commercial on national television networks.
Sen. Obama took heat for this spending from campaign finance reform supporters, whose loud disappointment went largely unheeded by the voters. But in the wake of the commanding Obama victory, reformers will rush to save the public financing system, motivated by the same desire that created the system in the first place: the desire to end the corrosive influence of money in politics. But as we reform the system, let us not disregard what the 2008 race revealed about the distorting effect public financing has on our national political contests.
For presidential campaigns, the choice of which states to contest is perhaps the most important, and cost is the most important consideration. Obviously, if you cannot afford to advertise in a state, you will not be able to campaign there. No campaign has the unlimited resources needed to actually compete in all 50 states, so candidates use polling and voting history to select a smaller set of states that they can afford.
Spending caps required by the public financing system restrict this decision making process even further. The result? Republican and Democratic candidates end up with equal amounts of money, and can only afford to battle for the voters in a handful of states.
The contested states always seem to be the same swing states. Certain states are blessed with roughly equal numbers of Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning voters. A candidate who is a mere 5 points down in one state is going to reason that it will be cheaper to sway that 5 percent than to pour money into a state where he or she trails by double digits. The opposing candidate will respond by flooding the airwaves to protect the 5 percent lead.
If this scenario sounds familiar, it is because it is exactly what occurred in 2000 and 2004 elections, elections whose closeness were in part the result of the public finance system. Al Gore and George Bush, and later John Kerry and George Bush, were forced by fiscal necessity to write off a huge majority of states as either blue or red. So the fight to be president of the whole United States became a contest for the hearts and minds of Florida and Ohio.
Our presidential elections are supposed to be national contests. But spending limits had turned them into glorified gubernatorial elections in two or three states.
Barack Obama shattered this trend by rejecting spending limits. He had enough resources to compete in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, but if he saw a glimmer of hope in an Indiana or Missouri, he had the money to invest in those states. Capped out at $84 million, Sen. McCain had fewer options. Forced to stick to a limited number of battlegrounds, he looked on as supposedly red states fell to Obama.
That a Democrat won in a state like North Carolina was taken to be nothing short of a miracle. Because for years Republicans and Democrats routinely wrote off most states, we accepted as dogma that certain states were permanent shades of red or blue. But Sen. Obama proved a little green could make a big difference. He waged a truly national campaign, and enters the White House with an actual mandate. If he had stayed within the public finance system, he may well have won, but it would have been a far narrower victory.
So as we begin to reform the public finance system once again, let us bear in mind that spending more than established public financing limits had some clear advantages for our political system. Certainly, there is much we can do. We may want to set much higher limits on spending, or we may want to again attempt to limit contribution amounts, or we may want to require reporting for even the most modest contribution.
But let us not return to the publicly financed campaigns of the past, with their narrow wins and non-existent mandates.
Andrew Koontz, a Democrat, is a member of the Princeton Borough Council.

