Up until a couple hours ago, I believed that the Obama campaign had no excuse for backing out of its pledge of public financing for the general election. It seemed like lame backpedaling and hypocrisy from a
candidate that claimed to be a champion of a "different kind of politics." However, thanks to Josh's frank assessment of John McCain's campaign road map and tomorrow's NY Times article, "Early Obama Commitment on Money Becomes Target," I now believe that it would be a grave mistake for the Obama campaign to commit to public financing without first setting some ground rules.

Josh writes that during this election season, McCain will be playing good cop to the Right's fear-mongering bad cop. The left hand of the GOP knows exactly what the right hand is doing. They have played this game many times before. And, as the Cunningham and Tennessee GOP incidents prove, this latest round is already underway.

The New York Times article describes and largely accepts McCain's line of attack on Obama's reluctance to flatly accept public financing. In explaining Obama's side of the story, the article cites a recent USA Today column where Senator Obama "appeared to set some new conditions" (to use the Times' skeptical-sounding language) for accepting a deal for public financing.

In the Times' words, "[Obama] argued that any bipartisan agreement to accept the limits of public financing would be 'meaningless' if there were no provisions to close the 'loopholes' that allow unlimited spending during the long primary season or by independent outside groups."

I (along with pretty much all of the news media) had assumed that Obama wanted to back out of public financing simply because he didn't want to give up his grassroots fundraising juggernaut. However, the truth is much more complicated. Let's connect the dots.

Without specific provisions to limit outside money, the GOP will be able to throw its racist attack machine into action, in a big way. John McCain will be able to formally distance himself from the attack machine, even as he reaps the reward of its efforts to "define" Barack Hussein *cough, cough* Obama.

If John McCain is truly interested in running a dignified and honest campaign, he will agree to meet with Obama to set the terms for a public financing agreement, rather than simply using Obama's perceived "hedging" as a convenient bludgeon for scoring political points.

The bottom line: The only way McCain can credibly distance himself from the GOP's underhanded attacks is to sit down with the Obama campaign and agree to ground rules on the role of outside organizations and outside money. Otherwise, we should hold him responsible for every racist smear that comes from the Right. It doesn't matter how many Cunnninghams he throws under the Straight Talk Express. He is still implicated by their actions.

Let's call shenanigans before the noise machine reaches full strength. Otherwise, it could be a very ugly election season.