What Brooks is missing

David Brooks writes that Obama has sold out his support for public financing:

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

This criticism is fair, I think, to some extent: it is true that the only difference between then and now is that now Obama has a whole bunch of money and doesn't need public financing, and that's why he has thrown the issue "under the truck". However, what matters here is the manner in which Obama has acquired all that cash. The whole public campaign financing issue is premised on the notion that the only way to rake up large sums of cash is to collect it from a select few wealthy individuals and corporations, giving these groups disproportionate influence in electoral politics. The fact that Obama has raised his millions from legions of small donors shows that this premise is false: the internet makes it possible for large numbers of ordinary people to exert a far greater influence in electoral politics than even the wealthiest individual contributors. In this new age of bottom-up fundraising, campaign finance reform has become a solution for a problem that no longer exists.

Of course, Obama rationalizing his withdrawal from the public finance system by calling it "broken" and blaming Republican 527s really is disingenuous, and he should be called out on it. But ultimately I think his move is justified: we are in a brave new world of campaign fundraising where the old rules and concerns either no longer apply or are far less significant.