Washington Post Hit Job On Obama

So the Washington Post publishes an editorial lambasting Obama for not disclosing enough information about his campaign's bundlers: folks who help raise more than $50,000. In fact, the subtitle of the editorial is "Barack Obama's failure to practice what he legislates".

Yet when you read the editorial, it's hard to see what they are whining about:

If you spend enough time hunting around on Mr. Obama's Web site, you might be able to unearth a list of his bundlers. (Hint: go to http://barackobama.com, click on "contact us," click on "answer center," click on category "fundraising," go to Answer 24.) You will see the names of those who bundle between $50,000 and $100,000 for Mr. Obama, the $100,000-to-$200,000 folks, and the $200,000-and-up crowd. Recently, prodded by a letter from campaign finance reform groups, and after the New York Times pointed out that the Obama campaign had not updated its bundler list for months, the Web site added a flotilla of names, along with each bundler's city and state. However, the Web site does not provide the bundlers' occupations or employers, although those should be readily available to the campaign from the bundlers' individual contributions.

So...the list of bundler is available on Obama's website, and they updated the list when asked, but the WaPo wants to know who these folks work for. Big deal. I'm sure WaPo can use Google and find out their occupations, if it is such a pressing issue. Obama isn't breaking any laws here, if anything he is disclosing more than the law currently requires.

But what really gets me is the next line:

John McCain, whose disclosure of bundlers had been sketchier than Mr. Obama's, told the campaign finance groups it would add employer and occupational information to his list of bundlers, promising monthly updates and saying he would include in the totals the amounts bundlers raised for the Republican National Committee to benefit the McCain campaign.

So John McCain, who is currently violating campaign finance law, is actually doing a worse job than Obama of disclosing his bundlers! Yet because he has "promised" to one day disclose more info, the editorialists at the WaPo give him a pass. Instead, they direct their fire at Obama.

The Obama campaign has disclosed over 500 bundlers, while McCain has only disclosed about 100. And this is not because Obama has more bundlers. In fact, 50% of McCain's fundraising ($75 million) has come from his top 500 bundlers; the top 500 bundlers for Obama have only brought in 17% ($50 million) of his total fundraising. So clearly McCain is the one with the most to disclose and the biggest conflict of interest, since without these bundlers he would be dead in the water. Obama, on the other hand, could survive thanks to his 1,500,000 small donors.

This is a ridiculous double-standard. The WaPo premises their hit job on the fact that Obama has supported disclosure laws in the past. As a result, they say, he is a hypocrite for not fully disclosing now. Yet McCain is the author of McCain-Feingold and the so-called champion of campaign finance. So isn't he even more guilty of hypocrisy, both for this and his other campaign finance shenanigans?

No one cares enough about the minutae of bundler disclosure for this to affect anything. But if this is the kind of pro-McCain bias we'll be seeing in the coming months, it's going to be a long election.