Campaign Finance And Hypocrisy All Around

Here are the rules: If you are running a presidential campaign, you can either opt to get some of the money for your campaign from the government, which will subject you to certain rules, and restrict how much money you can raise and spend; or you can opt to get no money from the government, which will allow you to avoid those rules, and raise and spend much more money. Either choice is fair and allowed.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has reneged on a pledge he had made to take the government campaign funds if the Republican presidential candidate John McCain did. Obama determined that he could raise and spend vastly more money if he opted not take the government money, and thus broke the promise.

That's not too cool to break your word like that... but John McCain has hardly been playing the straight line with the campaign finance laws himself:

During the primary John McCain's campaign was very low on money, so what John McCain did was to announce, "I'm taking the government money." Then before receiving that money, he ran to a bank and said, "See, I've got this government money as collateral, so give me a loan." Then he got the loan, and ran back to the government and said, "I don't need the government money after all, thanks." Sneaky, eh?

So both candidates have been a bit "political" and "dishonest" in their approach to campaign finance. However, I'll judge Obama, who broke a campaign pledge for pragmatic financial reasons less harshly than I'll just McCain, who played fast and loose with the rules (and possibly the law; the jury is still out) in order to trick financial institutions for financial gain.