News-Record.com

I was going to pass on Barack Obama's campaign-finance turnaround until I received his email late Friday afternoon explaining the switch and asking for money.

It was breathtaking in its dishonesty.

Recall that Obama had pledged to run his general election campaign with public funding if his opponent agreed to do the same. John McCain has.

So Obama, who presents himself as someone who will change the way Washington works, brazenly broke his word in regard to one of his biggest campaign decisions.

That ought to warn supporters that he might not stand by other promises, either.

What struck me as worse was his over-the-top justification. He didn't admit he simply wasn't going to abide by the spending limits imposed by the public financing system. Instead, he declared "independence from a broken system."

"This decision frees us to build a movement of millions of people giving whatever they can afford to a campaign that is truly reforming the way our political process works," he wrote in his email.

In other words, his campaign is raising record amounts of money -- so why contrain it with spending limits?

But what's broken about the system that he recently had endorsed? He doesn't say.

The only hint is his statement that "we're facing opponents who have become masters at gaming the broken system as it stands today -- collecting money from Washington lobbyists, special interest PACs, and relying on so-called 527 groups that can take unlimited contributions to peddle lies and smears."

Given that this hasn't been done to him, it's a bit premature to claim victimhood. Besides, 527s come in all stripes. Some are just as likely to attack McCain as others are to attack Obama. But McCain won't have nearly as much money to answer them ... nor to compete with Obama.

Obama's decision "frees us to take our campaign for change to parts of the country where Democratic presidential candidates haven't spent too much time in the past," he wrote.

Or spent too much money. Now he can. It's possible he'll be able to outspend McCain by a 3-1 margin this fall. He'll have plenty of money to outspend McCain in every state, including North Carolina. McCain will be under pressure to defend typically Red states that now will be in play. But the challenge will be next to impossible for him.

All this means that Obama, for all his high-minded rhetoric, is still just a politician. But a very, very good one. An overwhelming money advantage may ensure his victory in November, and if that seems to be in doubt he can simply break his other promise not to accept money from PACs and lobbyists. Like any other candidate, he'll do what's necessary to win.