Let me get this straight. Barack Obama changes his mind and decides he will not take 84.1 million taxpayer dollars for his presidential campaign and I am supposed to be outraged?

Don’t get me wrong. Reform-minded, change-infused Obama’s decision to go back on his word and forgo federal funds is a clear reversal that guarantees him certain induction into the Political Flip-Flop Hall of Fame. Not to mention getting on the Christmas card list for political columnists from coast to coast.

But those small honors aside, Obama’s decision to opt out of the public funds, and the accompanying spending limits, whether steeped in expediency or not, could very well turn out to be the most significant development in American politics in 30 years.

Obama is the first major presidential candidate to forgo public funds since the system was created as part of the post-Watergate reforms of 1976. His high-profile change of heart not only earned him time in the political doghouse with many on the left, but has also irked the “good government watchdog groups” who had hoped that McCain v. Obama 2008 would be the high-water mark for the public finance movement, which can be traced back 100 years to muckraker Teddy Roosevelt.

In modern-day campaigns it is a sure applause line to fire up the crowd by saying the campaign finance system is broken. This is normally followed by a rant about how the greatest democracy on Earth shouldn’t be beholden to special-interest money of the rich and influential insiders who donate the largest sums of campaign cash.

Fair enough. Concentration of money and power, back-room deals, and insider gaming of the political system should be something that we are always on guard against.

But with Obama’s unprecedented effectiveness in perfecting the use of the Internet by connecting (repeatedly) with over 100,000 small donors over the past year and a half, we may have come up with the ultimate backscratcher to the campaign finance itch that has pestered us for all these many years.

Think about it: An unknown, backbench, mixed-race state senator with no political pedigree to speak of has risen from obscurity, knocked off arguably the most formidable political team in a generation, and gone on to secure his party’s nomination for the presidency.

All done within four years of anyone in national politics learning his name. It’s like some unknown high school walk-on freshman runner qualifying for the Olympics by the time he gets to his senior year.

To put it inelegantly, Obama is not a card-carrying member of the LSC (Lucky Sperm Club). He didn’t have his daddy’s old-establishment Rolodex to raise a hundred million here and there to see if running for president might be pretty fun.

Nope. Obama combined old-fashioned smarts, great organizational abilities and a small (then) team of true believers who saw him as the real deal, then embraced the new-fashioned Internet to complete the recipe.  

Never again will an outsider be able to whine that his parents didn’t go to Yale or that he or she didn’t have the right connections to go all the way.

Despite the “hypocrisy” of going back on his word, whether Obama goes on to win the election or not, he has solved the campaign finance dilemma.  

With the Obama model, there should no longer be limits on how much money can be raised or spent. In addition, there should also be immediate and full disclosure on the Internet of every dollar given, raised and spent. There should also be full disclosure about the role of those “bundlers” who combine many smaller gifts.  

One of the most sacred things an individual can do is freely exchange his or her God-given time for wages. It is a spiritual covenant, not to mention the essence of our economic system.

And there is no moral authority that can legitimately prevent those same individuals from freely giving that which they have freely earned to someone they choose to represent them or their cause in the political arena.

Despite the angsting, weeping and gnashing of teeth about the money game that has been and will always be a major part of American politics, a backbench, unknown, state senator from Illinois has shown us the way.

You can reach Jim Mills at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it