An Obama Flashback

Do politicians from the two major parties ever stand a chance of chance of changing Washington or will Washington always change them?

Do politicians from the two major parties ever stand a chance of changing Washington or will Washington always change them? Unfortunately, our new president doesn't give us a very hopeful answer to this question.

This morning, we stumbled on a brilliant 2006 Harper’s magazine profile of then Senator Barack Obama by Ken Silverstein. The trip in the way-back machine is well worth it, and incredibly instructive, even if you happened to read the piece when it was first released. It’s called, “Barack Obama, Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine” and it provides a clear example of why we can’t trust any politician from the two major parties, even one as gifted and charismatic as Obama, to change our broken government.

The first quote from our new president that jumped out at us was this one:

“… for a political leader to get things done, he or she ideally should be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead.”

Jeez. Even John Kerry would call this tepid. This circumspect, one could almost say calculating attitude might explain why Obama has filled his administration with wall-to-wall Washington insiders, but it doesn’t quite jibe with his promise to bring “fundamental change” to our government, does it? Of course, it wouldn’t have been quite as rousing to announce to the adoring throngs on the campaign trail that he only wanted to bring a little change, but not too much.

Also of note in the article is the description of Obama’s already well-oiled fund-raising machine. He didn’t even have two years in the Senate under his belt at the time. But he was already pulling in more money than just about any of his colleagues, and taking it from just about anyone with a checkbook:

Obama’s top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense).

…

As of this summer [2006], Obama had raised nearly $16 million for his original Senate run and for his 2010 reelection war chest. He has taken in an additional $3.8 million for the Hopefund, his leadership PAC … Last year [2005, Obama's first full year in the Senate], the Hopefund took in more than any other leadership PAC except for those of Bill Frist, John McCain, and John Kerry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But the highlight of the piece is reading about how Obama proposed to curtail the corrosive influence of money in our politics back then:

The solution he supports is some form of public financing for campaigns, combined … with some reduction in the cost of running for office; for example, by providing candidates with free political advertising.

What a sad, dispiriting difference two years in Washington can make. Obama 2006 supported public financing of elections. Obama 2008 reneged on a pledge to take … public financing. Obama 2006 wanted to limit the cost of running for office and give candidates free political advertising. Obama 2008 raised and spent nearly a billion dollars and drowned out his poorer opponent by saturating the airwaves with thousands of paid political advertisements.

Not too far ahead of the curve, indeed.