Karl Rove, former campaign guru for President George W. Bush and a pretty sharp guy, had some astute observations in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the role of money in the McCain-Obama contest. A few highlights:
Between [May 31] and Oct. 15, the Obama/DNC juggernaut raised $658.7 million. I estimate… Mr. Obama, the DNC and two other Obama fund-raising vehicles raised an additional $120 million to $140 million in October and November, giving them a total of between $827 million and $847 million in funds for the general election.
Mr. McCain and the RNC spent $550 million in the general election, including the $84 million in public financing…
How did Mr. Obama use his massive spending advantage?
He buried Mr. McCain on TV… [B]etween June and Election Day, Mr. Obama had a 3-to-2 advantage over Mr. McCain on network TV buys. And Mr. Obama’s edge was likely larger on local cable TV, which Nielsen doesn’t monitor.
A state-by-state analysis confirms the Obama advantage. Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain in Indiana nearly 7 to 1, in Virginia by more than 4 to 1, in Ohio by almost 2 to 1 and in North Carolina by nearly 3 to 2. Mr. Obama carried all four states.
Mr. Obama also used his money to outmuscle Mr. McCain on the ground, with more staff, headquarters, mail and a larger get-out-the-vote effort. In mid-September the Obama campaign said its budget for Florida was $39 million. The actual number was probably larger. But in any case, Mr. McCain spent a mere $13.1 million in the state. Mr. Obama won Florida by 2.81 percentage points.
Mr. McCain was outspent by wide margins in every battleground state…
Mr. Obama’s victory marks the death of the campaign finance system… Ironically, the victim of this broken system is one of its principal architects — Mr. McCain. He helped craft the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform along with Sen. Russ Feingold in 2002.
No presidential candidate will ever take public financing in the general election again and risk being outspent as badly as Mr. McCain was this year. And even liberals, who have long denied that money is political speech that should be protected by First Amendment, may now be forced to admit that their donations to Mr. Obama were a form of political expression.
It is time to trust the American people and remove limits on how much an individual can donate to a campaign…
Mr. Rove’s conclusion that no presidential candidate will ever take taxpayer dollars again should probably be amended to state that no serious presidential candidate will ever participate again, but otherwise is almost certainly true (and hardly original).
What Rove’s analysis leaves out is that not only the taxpayer-funded system as a viable part of presidential campaign financing was demolished by Obama, but also the idea that some noticeable number of Americans actually care enough about campaign finance "reform" for it to influence their vote.
McCain was almost certainly banking on turning Obama’s decision to opt out of the taxpayer-funded system into a liability for the Obama campaign. His campaign sharply criticized Obama for going back on his earlier apparent pledge to participate in the taxpayer-funded system, and brought it up repeatedly. When reports surfaced late in the campaign that there may have been improper contributions made to the Obama campaign over the internet, the McCain campaign was quick to pounce, making the normal noises about "corruption" and the need for campaign finance "reform."
All to no avail, apparently, as Bob Dole has also found out when information surfaced late in the ’96 race that the Clinton/Gore campaign may have solicited and received contributions in questionable ways. In truth, there just aren’t that many Americans who care enough about where and how candidates get there money for it to affect their vote (aside from outright bribery a la Randy "Duke" Cunningham, of course).
The votes the McCain campaign was hoping for over the issue of Obama’s fundraising practices and success simply never materialized, because they do not exist. Sure, lots of Democrats feign outrage that Republicans get money from individuals connected to the oil and pharmaceutical industries or from the National Rifle Association’s PAC, while Republicans work themselves into hysterics that Democrats receive funding from persons and PACs connected to the trial lawyers, labor unions, and environmental activists.
But it’s almost all for show – "sound and fury, signifying nothing," as a somewhat notable bard once wrote. The McCain campaign badly miscalculated the voting public’s interest and depth of commitment to campaign finance "reform," and their assumption that their financial disadvantage would be offset enough by some nonexistent reservoir of support for a candidate who was free of so-called "special interest" money quite likely led to their losing not just a few swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and Colorado, but reliably "red" states like Indiana and North Carolina. It turned what would likely have been a close election (at least in terms of electoral votes) into a blowout for the guy who ignored the "reform" mantra and chose instead to raise all the money he needed to compete and get his message out to voters.
No serious candidate in the future is likely to make the same mistake of choosing the nonexistent block of "reform" votes over sufficient resources to run an effective campaign. On that, Rove is certainly correct.
